DevShelf

Every project. Every file. One place.

macOS app
Swift
Released
Personal project

DevShelf trailer: every project, every file, one shelf

The problem I faced

My projects were scattered across Downloads, the Desktop, Documents and old external drives, in folders called final-v2 and project-new. I lost time searching, opened the wrong copy, and more than once lost the logins that belonged to a project.

What I built

A native macOS app that gives every project one organized home without moving your files, keeps project logins in the Keychain, shows Git status, and lets AI assistants organize everything through MCP.

The problem

Like most developers, I work on many projects at once: client sites, plugins, apps and experiments. Over time they ended up everywhere. When I needed one project, I often couldn’t find it, opened the wrong copy, or lost the logins that went with it.

What I built

DevShelf gives every project one clean home on the Mac:

A real folder per project, with folder types like Code, Design, Documents, Images and Deliverables, or templates for web apps, WordPress and mobile apps.
Add anything without moving it. Files and folders are linked by default, so originals stay in place.
Find duplicates across projects and old copies in Downloads and the Desktop.
Logins for hosting, WordPress, FTP and databases, with passwords kept only in the macOS Keychain.
Git status for every repository: branch, uncommitted changes and unpushed commits.
External drives that are recognised again whenever you plug them in.

AI assistants, through MCP

Because I spend my day with AI assistants, DevShelf includes an MCP server. Click Connect next to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex, Windsurf or Cursor, then ask something like “organize my client projects”. Assistants can create projects and folders, add and sort files, find duplicates and check Git status. They only change things inside your projects, nothing is deleted permanently, and passwords are never exposed.

How it’s built

DevShelf is a native Swift and SwiftUI app. It watches project folders with macOS file-system events, so changes made anywhere appear within about a second. The MCP server runs from the same app and speaks JSON-RPC over standard input and output.

Built with AI

I designed DevShelf around my own workflow and built it with Claude, Codex and Cursor. Fittingly, those same assistants can now organize my projects through it.