Scan Organizer

Scan Organizer

Processes scanned PDFs — extracts text (Docling + vision OCR), classifies by category using an LLM, and organizes into subfolders with markdown and metadata sidecars. Works with any OpenAI-compatible API (Ollama, OpenAI, OpenRouter, etc.).

Categories

medical, financial, insurance, tax, legal, personal, household, other

Commands

Run from the scan-organizer project directory.

Process new scans

uv run scan-organizer process

Dry run (classify without moving)

uv run scan-organizer process --dry-run

Process a single file

uv run scan-organizer process --file /path/to/scan.pdf

Force re-process all (including already processed)

uv run scan-organizer process --force

Check inbox status

uv run scan-organizer status

Undo a processed file (move back to inbox)

uv run scan-organizer undo <filename>

Reclassify a file

uv run scan-organizer reclass <filename>

Output Format

All commands output JSON to stdout. Progress messages go to stderr.

Process output

{"processed": 3, "skipped": 7, "errors": 0, "results": [{"file": "...", "category": "medical", "title": "...", "destination": "..."}]}

Status output

{"inbox_count": 10, "unprocessed": 3, "already_processed": 7, "categories": {"medical": 2, "financial": 3}}

Architecture

1. Extract — Docling parses PDF structure and native text
2. OCR — Pages with sparse text are rendered to PNG and sent to a vision model
3. Classify — Merged text sent to a language model for categorization
4. Organize — PDF moved to <scans_dir>/<category>/, .md + .meta.json sidecars written

File Organization

<scans_dir>/
  medical/
    2025-12-20_lab-results_0003.pdf
    2025-12-20_lab-results_0003.md
    2025-12-20_lab-results_0003.meta.json
  financial/
    ...
  .manifest.json    <- tracks all moves for undo

Tips

• Run status first to see how many unprocessed scans are in the inbox
• Use --dry-run to preview classifications before moving files
• The manifest tracks all moves for auditability
• If a classification is wrong, use reclass to undo and re-process