What it does

Pinkbin is a Windows disk analyzer built on Tauri 2 + React + Rust. It reads the NTFS Master File Table directly to map your entire drive in 2–5 seconds, renders a treemap and tree view, and offers two cleanup paths: drag any folder to a built-in AI chat for a “what is this, can I delete it?” verdict, or use curated cleanup scripts for known space hogs like WeChat PC and Conda environments. Everything goes to the system Recycle Bin by default; it never reads file contents, only directory metadata.

The interesting bit

The project treats “accidental data loss” as a first-class risk to engineer against. Cleanup scripts require a TOML manifest and a Rust integration test with positive assertions and red-line assertions (e.g., “never touch chat DBs”), enforced in CI. The authors nuked 36 legacy scaffolds because nobody had verified their glob boundaries. That level of paranoia is rare in a 508-star hobby project.

Key highlights

• NTFS MFT direct read for whole-drive scans in single-digit seconds; falls back to jwalk on other platforms
• BYOK AI advisor: Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or local Ollama; only path names, sizes, file counts, and ≤20 sample paths are sent
• Curated scaffolds: WeChat PC (22 cleanup scopes, 3.x/4.x compatible) and Conda (stale env detection via conda-meta/history mtime)
• All deletions default to Recycle Bin; optional 7-day quarantine with ~/.pinkbin/undo.jsonl
• trash-rs for safe deletion, globset for path matching, react-markdown for AI responses

Caveats

• Windows only for prebuilt binaries; macOS and Linux builds exist but lack signatures and real-machine validation
• Only two cleanup scaffolds ship today (WeChat, Conda); the authors explicitly warn users to handle everything else manually
• First launch triggers Windows SmartScreen; the installer needs admin rights for MFT reading

Verdict

Worth a look if you’re on Windows, paranoid about disk space, and want an AI second opinion before you nuke a folder. Skip it if you need macOS/Linux binaries today or want fully automated cleanup beyond WeChat and Conda.