What to say
Yellide has no buttons. It lives inside Claude, so everything happens by asking. These are the things worth asking — in the words you would actually use.
Shortcuts, if your app offers them
Yellide registers five ready-made requests — find, index,
describe, archive and diagnose. Where they appear
depends on the app: look in the + menu beside the message box. In Claude
Desktop the / menu is for Skills, not for these.
If you cannot find them, ignore this section entirely. Typing the requests below works just as well and reads more naturally — the shortcuts save keystrokes, nothing more.
Starting off
“What media files do I have on this Mac?”
“Keep going until the index is finished.”
“How far along is the scan?”
Say media files on this Mac rather than my archive. The word archive can be read as your past conversations, and then it answers from memory instead of looking.
Finding something
“Find the cycling event.”
“What did I shoot in March 2020?”
“Show me everything from the D610.”
“Anything with bunting in it?”
“Drone shots from Kerala.”
Filenames, folders, dates, camera, lens and place all work from the moment the scan finishes. Searching by what is in the picture works once things have been described — see below.
Getting to the file
“Open that one.”
“Copy the path.”
“Show it in Finder.”
Making it searchable by what is in it
This is the part that no filename can do for you. Claude looks at the pictures and writes down what it sees, and one description covers a whole shoot — so a few minutes of looking can cover hundreds of files.
“Look at my photos and describe what is in them.”
“Keep describing until it is done.”
“How much of my archive has been described so far?”
“What still needs describing?”
If it describes a few and then stops, say keep going until it is done. It is a loop, and it will run for as long as you let it.
Keeping things out of the index
“That one is an ID card — mark it private.”
“Mark the medical reports private.”
A private item is recorded by type only, never by its contents, and it is reduced to a bare label if you ever export. Marking one copy marks every copy of the same file, wherever it sits.
Drives that are not plugged in
“Where is that file?”
“Which drives do you know about?”
Yellide keeps knowing what was on a drive after you unplug it. It will tell you the drive by name and say plainly that it is not connected. That is the whole point of it.
Getting your index out
“Export my index.”
Plain JSON that needs no software to read, so nothing here is a one-way door.
When something is wrong
“Run Yellide diagnostics and show me the report.”
The report has no filenames, paths, descriptions or search terms in it — only counts and capabilities — so it is safe to paste to whoever is helping you.
One thing not to do
Do not drag a media folder into the chat window. That tries to read every file into the conversation and will fail on a large folder. Yellide finds your folders itself, so there is nothing to attach.