Work · 6 of 6

lens

Done

Backs up and organizes my footage across drives and Google Drive, from one command.

I can’t shoot a dive twice, and one of my working drives drops to USB 2 and disconnects. lens plans what goes up next, sends the most at-risk trips first, and won’t call anything safe until a fingerprint says so.

Role: Solo builder, directing coding agents
Stack: Python standard library, rclone
Scale: 123 trips and 3.7 TB at the Oct 5 scan
Size: About 9,600 lines, 153 tests
Links: Source is private
As of: Nov 1, 2026

Rebuild The lens menu, rebuilt in HTML, with its labels shortened and the numbers and drive names left out.

What a backup has to prove

Google’s daily limit is about 750 GB, and it counts every app and copies made inside Drive. A drive can vanish halfway through a copy. A file with the right name and size can still be the wrong file.

So lens treats “it’s backed up” as a claim that needs evidence, and it keeps the evidence.

Decisions

Only add, only check

lens never deletes or overwrites anything in Google Drive: rclone copy --immutable, never sync, move or delete. Original drives stay untouched. At any destination, an identical file is adopted and a different one is reported as a conflict and left alone.

Instead of a sync that can delete

Probably isn’t Confirmed

Confirmed means the file is in the lens library, or its md5 fingerprint matches one Google holds. Probably means a file with the same name and size exists somewhere in Drive.

That isn’t proof, so Probably files still count as at risk until lens confirm reads them and compares fingerprints with Google’s.

Instead of matching on name and size

Read the copy back from the drive itself

Local copies read the source once with md5 and write to a partial file with the Mac’s file cache off, flush to the drive, then read the copy back from the drive and compare before it gets its real name. Drives are recognized by volume UUID, so a different disk with the same name won’t be mistaken for mine.

Instead of trusting a copy that finished

Ride through the drop-outs

If a drive disconnects during an upload, fingerprint check or copy, lens waits up to an hour for it to come back and continues. A drive that returns under a new name is found by its volume ID. Google only keeps files that finished uploading, so an interrupted upload leaves nothing half-written.

Instead of starting over by hand

How it’s built and checked

Each safety rule has a test, run on temp folders with a local folder in place of Google Drive.

Plan first: Every command that copies or uploads shows a plan and asks before starting.
Nothing skipped: Folders or files that can’t be read are reported, and a trip or copy with any of them is never marked complete.
One at a time: New media operations share an exclusive lock. Browsing, planning and receipts stay available while a transfer runs.
Receipts: Everything writes a receipt, plus a one-line history.
Exit codes: 0 done, 1 error or refused, 2 finished but incomplete.

Where it stands

Works today

Planning, uploads, md5 checks, verified local copies, drop-out recovery and receipts.
With keep-trying on, it waits out Google’s daily limit and tries again every hour.

Held on purpose

Real removal. A guarded implementation exists, but it stays blocked until Reef can provide complete reference coverage, and no menu checkbox or setting can turn it on.

Not yet

Retiring the Drive app’s Computers backup once the library is verified.