User guide

This guide is for a person who wants to use Burrow™ on their Mac. It describes the intended workflow. Features that are specified but not built are labeled Not in this build. This page does not invent screenshots or UI that is not shipped.

Burrow™ is a local-first macOS storage management machine. It inventories files across internal disks, iCloud Drive, OneDrive, and removable volumes so you can answer:

1. What files do I have?
2. Where are they stored?
3. What is duplicated, stale, or suitable for archival?
4. Are important files actually protected by verified backups?

Safety Level 0 is in effect. Burrow™ may discover volumes, read metadata, and (once the scanner ships) catalog approved roots. It must not move, rename, delete, archive, or back up your files.

The public site is documentation plus a console shell. Inventory still requires the Swift engine on this Mac. A browser on burrow.jasonkoch.io cannot see your disks.

What you can do in this build

• Read product specifications, designs, and this guide on the website.
• Open the console / dashboard. Volume cards, recovery totals, and protection health stay empty until the engine reports inventory.
• Run the local engine and confirm loopback health. See the Admin / operator guide.

How you will use Burrow™

1. Discover volumes and providers

The engine enumerates mounted volumes and detects iCloud Drive and OneDrive roots. Discovery records identity and classification. It does not scan file contents and does not change cloud synchronization.

In this build: volume discovery and provider detection exist in the engine. The website dashboard does not yet list those volumes.

2. Approve scan roots

You choose which folders the engine may inventory. Nothing is scanned until a root is approved.

Not in this build. Scanner approval is specified in 04 — Inventory and is not shipped.

3. Inventory approved roots

After approval, a read-only scan records paths, sizes, timestamps, and (when hashing is implemented) content hashes in the local SQLite catalog. The catalog is application metadata. Your documents are not modified.

Not in this build. The inventory UI and file scanner are not shipped. See 04 — Inventory and 08 — UI/UX.

4. Review files and storage

Storage and Files views will show volumes, providers, coverage, and catalog rows. Synced is not treated as backed up.

Not in this build as a populated inventory. The Storage and Files routes exist as empty shells.

5. Find duplicates

Exact-duplicate groups will show every location and the recoverable local bytes, with evidence. Filename, size, and date are never enough to authorize deletion.

Not in this build. Duplicate detection is specified in 05 — Duplicate Detection. The sidebar item is disabled until release 0.2.

6. Backup and archive

Verified backup and archive-copy workflows come after inventory. They remain forbidden at Safety Level 0.

Not in this build. See 07 — Backup and 06 — Archive. Those sidebar items are disabled placeholders.

Safety, stated plainly

Until that change, treat every recommendation as evidence only. Nothing in the UI can start a delete, move, archive, or backup of user files.

Open the product

Operators who need to run the engine, set secrets, or find the catalog should use the Admin / operator guide.