Crankshaft

1. 1Type what you want
2. 2Review the before / after preview
3. 3Apply
4. 4Changed your mind? Undo

What it’s for

Crankshaft turns “sort these by shoot date and put the b-roll in its own folder” into actual moves, renames and new folders. You see every change before it happens, and every operation can be undone.

It only ever sends file and folder names to the AI, never your media.

Organize a folder

1. Open Crankshaft and choose the folder to work on.
2. Type what you want in the instruction box. Examples:
   • Move all .mov and .mp4 files into a Videos folder
   • Group everything by date into folders named YYYY-MM-DD
   • Rename these as {date}_{originalName}
   • Put anything from the A-cam into A-CAM and the rest into B-CAM
   • Delete the empty folders
3. Crankshaft shows a before / after preview and a summary: how many moves, renames, new folders, deletes, skipped.
4. Click Apply.
5. Not right? Click Undo. Everything goes back.

You can also right-click a file or folder for quick actions without typing.

Kinds of instruction

Kind	Examples
Organize	Group by date, by camera, by type; create a structure
Modify	Rename with a pattern; add a prefix or suffix
Cleanup	Remove empty folders, junk files, duplicates
Compare	Tell me what’s in A that isn’t in B
Query	How many clips are longer than a minute? Which are 4K?

Rename tokens

When renaming, use tokens and Crankshaft fills them in per file:

Token	Becomes
{originalName}	The current name without extension
{ext}	The extension
{date}	File date as YYYY-MM-DD
{YYYYMMDD}	File date without dashes
{dayPadded}	Day of month, two digits
{parentFolder}	Name of the folder the file is in
{folderNum}	A running number per folder

Example: {date}_{parentFolder}_{originalName}.{ext} → 2026-09-28_A-CAM_C0012.mov.

1. 1{date} → the file date
2. 2{parentFolder} → its folder
3. 3{originalName} → the current name
4. 4{ext} → the extension

Safety

• Preview first. Nothing moves until you click Apply.
• Undo reverses the whole operation, in order.
• Deletes go to the macOS Trash, never straight to oblivion. Empty the Trash yourself when you’re sure.
• Crankshaft works inside the folder you chose and won’t touch anything outside it.

Credits

Each instruction costs AI credits, usually 1–2. Your balance is shown in the app and on the billing page. If you’d rather use your own Gemini key, a team admin can add it in Settings → AI key and Crankshaft uses that at no credit cost.

When credits run out, the app tells you what to do: buy a top-up, upgrade, or add your own key.

Reusable instructions

If you give the same instruction every shoot, save it as an instruction set in the Toolbox and run it with one click.