Features

Everything AFTRIMGE does, and nothing it does not.

Every capability on this page exists in version 0.2.0. Where the engine can do something the interface does not yet offer, that is said explicitly on the product page.

Recording

Live folder watching: Operating-system change notifications, normalised across platforms.
Settle before snapshot: A file must stop changing (about one second by default) before a version is recorded.
Reconciliation: A scan on launch records changes made while AFTRIMGE was closed.
Ignore rules: Application scratch, lock and tooling files are not recorded.
Identity across renames: Renames and moves keep a file's history. Moves recognised by identical content are graded as inferred.
Own-write recognition: A restore does not come back as a phantom change.

Canonical objects and deduplication

Content addressing: Objects are stored under the SHA-256 digest of their bytes.
One-pass admission: The digest is computed over exactly the bytes written, in the same pass, then published by rename.
Deduplication: Identical content is stored once across versions, files and projects.
Canonical size: An object's size comes from its bytes, not from what was observed or claimed.
Size ceiling: Files over 256 MiB are recorded as versions without their bytes.

Snapshots and time

Versions and events: Every create, modify, rename, delete and restore is an event with a time and, where kept, content.
Temporal scrubbing: The project rebuilt at any recorded instant, with historical names and real previews.
Replay: Watch the project build itself, with keyboard transport and zoom.
Evolution lanes: Every file as a lane across time, ordered by how much it changed.
Historical search: Search every name a file has ever had.
Comparison: Rendered image differences with perceptual, pixel and colour measurements; line differences for text.
Export: Write any kept version to a location you choose.

Retention and preservation

Age-based retention: Release the bytes of versions older than a number of days, previewed first.
History survives release: Released versions keep their events, names and identity.
Present always restorable: The newest version of every existing file is never released.
Preservation: Record a decision to keep the content along a continuity route.
Withdrawal forecasts: See what releasing a holder would expose before doing it.

Storage accounting and collection

Storage ledger: Every piece of content, its holders, and its state: HELD, RECLAIMABLE, MISSING or UNTRACKED.
Single liveness authority: The collector, ledger and forecasts share one definition of what is held.
Previewable collection: A dry run reports exactly what a sweep would remove.
Admission-safe sweeps: Bytes with no record are only collected once at least 15 minutes old, so capture in progress is never swept.
Memory report: Size on disk, size without deduplication, and what is reclaimable.

Integrity and consistency

Object verification: Bytes read in full and hashed: VERIFIED, CORRUPT, MISSING, UNREADABLE or UNVERIFIED.
Whole-archive verification: Every stored object checked in one pass, with progress and a stop button. A stopped or partly unreadable pass never reads as verified.
Consistency audit: Missing objects, orphaned bytes and size mismatches reported separately, never silently repaired.
Conservative repair: A damaged object is rebuilt only from a source whose content has been verified to match.
Maintenance log: Repairs and custody changes are recorded apart from file history.

Restore

Planned restores: A plan shows the target and any conflict before anything is written.
Three modes: Copy never overwrites. In place is refused on conflict. Force is explicit.
Triple verification: Stored bytes, staged file and final file are each hashed.
Containment: A restore can only write inside its project, and refuses a destination reached through a junction or symbolic link.
Windows names: Device names, alternate data streams and names Windows would silently trim are refused as destinations.
Deleted files: Recreated without merging into a file that has since taken the path.

Analysis, archaeology and continuity

Container and metadata reading: Structure and EXIF read directly from the file, every field traceable to its offset.
Fingerprints: Perceptual hashes, colour, edge, alpha and luminance measurements.
Transformation cascade: Tests for resize, crop, recompression, grading, rotation and placement inside another image.
Source survey: Search nominated folders, up to 20,000 files and 512 MiB per file.
Memory search: Compare an image against everything already recorded.
Continuity traces: Chains of measured relationships anchored in recorded history, never stronger than their weakest step.
Evidence grades: FACT, INFERRED, TEMPORAL and POSSIBLE kept distinct in data and in the interface.
Provenance: Any claim explains its records, measurements, reproducibility and analysis version.

Portable archives

Portable Windows build: Runs from a folder with its archive, logs and web cache inside it.
Relocatable: The archive is found beside the executable wherever the folder is moved.
Independent of installs: A portable copy and an installed copy never share an archive.
Self-watch protection: A folder that contains the archive cannot be watched.

Running it

One copy per archive: Starting AFTRIMGE again on an archive that is already open says so and exits, so two engines never record the same folders.
Backup before upgrade: A database in an older format is copied and the copy checked before a newer version changes it. If the copy cannot be made, nothing changes.
Crash record: An internal failure writes a short local record before the program stops. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Bounded logs: Daily logs are kept for 14 days and at most 64 MB besides today's.
Diagnostic report: A report you save yourself, with counts and log lines stripped of every name, path and file content.
Full-disk behaviour: Tested with a simulated full disk: nothing half-written is left in the store, in your folders or at an export destination.