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You have something in the clipboard and you need it as a file — because you want to point at it. Absorber turns it into one and hands you back the path.
Absorber lives in the tray as a funnel. Click it and whatever sits in the clipboard
becomes a real file: an image becomes a PNG, text becomes a .txt, rich text can become
.html. The path of the new file goes straight back into your clipboard, ready to paste
into a chat, a prompt, an issue or a command line.
The window itself is deliberately a white rectangle. It is not an unfinished placeholder — it is the surface you drop things onto.
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Why | The problem this solves |
| Install | Requirements and setup |
| Use | Tray, window, keyboard |
| Settings | Every option and what it does |
| Local model naming | Optional Ollama integration |
| Not to be confused with Gardener | Name collision, different tool |
| Development | Tests and layout |
| Roadmap | What is deliberately not in 0.1.0 |
Clipboard content has no address. You cannot link to it, attach it, drop it into a prompt as a file reference or hand it to a tool that takes a path. The usual workaround is "open an editor, paste, save as, navigate, name it, copy the path" — six steps for something that should be one.
Absorber makes it one step, and the result is the path, not the file. Pointing at things is done with paths.
Requires Python 3.11 or newer.
git clone https://github.com/file-bricks/absorber.git
cd absorber
pip install -e .Start it:
python -m absorber # or: absorber
START.bat # Windows
./start.sh # macOS / LinuxWindows first, but nothing in the core is Windows-only: the clipboard, the tray and the paths all go through Qt.
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Left-click the tray icon | Materialize the clipboard right now |
| Tray → Materialize | Same thing, from the menu |
| Tray → Recent files | The last 10 files; clicking one copies its path |
| Tray → Mode | Switch between desktop and virtual |
| Right-click in the window → Paste | Materialize, with the kind symbol shown |
| Ctrl+V in the window | Same |
After writing, the kind of file that was created appears as a symbol in the middle of the white area, shrinks and fades out. The status line shows the path for three seconds; the full path is always in the tooltip.
Closing the window does not quit Absorber. It keeps living in the tray. Quit from there.
| Clipboard holds | Becomes | Note |
|---|---|---|
| An image | .png |
Screenshots, copied pictures |
| Text | .txt or .md |
Which one is a setting |
| Rich text / HTML | .html |
Off by default |
| A list of files | Copies in the target folder | Off by default |
Open with Tray → Settings…. The configuration lives in config.json under the
platform config directory (%APPDATA%\absorber\ on Windows).
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Target folder | your desktop | Where files are written in desktop mode. Empty means the desktop, resolved by Qt — on a machine with redirected folders that is the OneDrive desktop, as intended. |
| Mode | Desktop | Desktop writes to the target folder. Virtual writes to a temp folder and cleans up after itself. |
| Virtual retention | 7 days | How long virtual files survive. 0 disables cleanup entirely. |
| Text formats | .txt |
Which extensions text may use. Ticking .html also makes rich text a kind of its own. |
| Copy file lists | off | Whether files copied in the file manager get duplicated into the target folder. |
| Path to clipboard | on | Puts the new file's path in the clipboard. This is the actual answer to your request. |
| Model naming | on | Ask a local model for a file name. |
| Model | auto |
auto uses the first installed model, or name one explicitly. |
A full field-by-field legend — what each field asks, why it is needed and where the value
takes effect — is in docs/BLUEPRINT.md.
If Ollama is running on http://127.0.0.1:11434, Absorber asks it
for a three-to-five-word name based on the first 800 characters of the text.
Every failure is silent and costs you nothing. No Ollama, a timeout, a missing model, an empty answer — in each case the fallback name applies:
2026-09-20_141233_meeting-notes-from-today text, named from its first words
2026-09-20_141233_image an image
2026-09-20_141233_image_2 and the next one, on collision
A naming suggestion must never cost you a file. The probe gets one second, the naming request three.
Gardener uses the words absorb(),
materialize() and .absorber/ for pulling files into its database. That is a
different tool solving a different problem, and the two do not interact. Absorber here
goes the other way: clipboard content out into the file system.
pip install -e ".[dev]"
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen pytest115 tests, no network access, no real clipboard required. The core is deliberately free of GUI imports:
| Module | Responsibility |
|---|---|
absorber/core.py |
Detect the kind, write the file, return the paths |
absorber/naming.py |
Slugs, collisions, the Ollama client with injectable HTTP |
absorber/config.py |
Defaults, load/save, resolved folders, virtual cleanup |
absorber/recent.py |
The recent files list |
absorber/window.py |
White area, paste, the shrinking kind symbol |
absorber/tray.py |
Funnel icon, menu, recent list |
absorber/settings_dialog.py |
One widget per blueprint field |
Deliberately left out of 0.1.0:
- Global hotkey — materialize without touching the tray
- Autostart — start with the session
- More formats — RTF, SVG, audio from the clipboard
- Directory support in copied file lists (currently skipped)
MIT — see LICENSE. Third-party components (PySide6/Qt, LGPL-3.0) are listed in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.txt.