Know exactly what to keep before you wipe your PC. ReDows scans a Windows 11 machine and builds an exhaustive inventory — apps, configuration and personal files — before a hard reset, so nothing worth keeping is forgotten.

ℹ️ This is an early pre-release (see the badge above for the current version). It works — you can download it and use it today — but it is still evolving: commands, output and the rule set can change, and parts of the plan are not built yet. Feedback is welcome.

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⬇️ Download

Grab the latest build from the Releases page:

1. Download the win-x64 zip (ReDows-<version>-win-x64.zip).
2. Unzip it anywhere.
3. Double-click redows-gui.exe.

No installation and no .NET runtime required — everything is bundled in the single executable. Keep the rules, modules, prescreen, memory and settings folders next to it; the app reads them at startup.

Some features (recovering locked files from a volume snapshot, reading machine-wide settings) work better if you run it as administrator.

✨ What it does

• 🧭 Forget nothing — the guiding metric: never lose a useful file, config or app.
• 🔒 Read-only on your PC — ReDows only reads and copies; it never deletes or modifies anything on the scanned machine.
• 🖥️ A window, or the command line — a desktop app (redows-gui.exe) walks you through it; a CLI (redows.exe) does the same for power users and scripts. Both run on the same engine.
• 🧹 Scan and sort — classify every file (keep / review / ignore) with a completeness report, then sort what is left to review folder by folder. Everything is kept by default; you drop the junk into a trash you can restore from.
• 💾 Real backup — copy what you keep to a disk, USB drive or network share, with secrets sealed in an AES-256 vault you can open with your password on any PC. Locked files are recovered from a read-only volume snapshot.
• ♻️ Restore — put everything back after the reset, to the original locations or a folder you pick; secrets are extracted from the vault, nothing is overwritten.
• 🧩 Total accounting — every scanned object lands in exactly one bucket (ignore / capture / review), with the equation shown — no silent gaps. Anything uncertain goes to review, never to a silent ignore.
• 🔁 Pairs with InDows — export your installed apps and settings so InDows can reinstall and re-apply them on a fresh Windows.
• 🧠 Optional local AI — point it at a local model (e.g. LM Studio or Ollama) for sorting suggestions. Off by default, metadata only — nothing leaves your PC.
• 🎮 Game saves — an optional catalog (ludusavi) locates game-save folders so they are captured too.
• 🔁 Find duplicates — spot duplicate files and how much space you would reclaim (it proposes, never deletes).

🔧 How it works

1. Scan — walk the machine read-only and classify every file via the rule set (ignore / capture / review), with a completeness report and an optional per-file manifest of everything worth keeping.
2. Review and sort — walk the folders left to review, keep everything by default, and drop what you do not need (restorable from the trash).
3. Back up — copy what you keep to your chosen destination, sealing any secrets in the encrypted vault and recovering locked files from a volume snapshot.
4. Restore — after the reset, put the files back and unseal the vault.
5. Hand off to InDows — export an InDows-ready profile (apps + settings) to rebuild the machine.

🧩 Data-driven by design

What to keep or skip lives in a versioned YAML rule set (rules/), not in the code, so it is extensible without recompiling. Category modules (modules/) and the folder memory (memory/) ride along the same way.

🛠️ Build from source

Requires the .NET 10 SDK on Windows 11.

git clone https://github.com/hess0ul/ReDows.git
cd ReDows

# desktop app
dotnet run --project src/ReDows.Gui

# or the CLI
dotnet run --project src/ReDows.Cli -- context show      # discover this machine's scan context
dotnet run --project src/ReDows.Cli -- scan --out scan-report.txt   # walk and classify (read-only)
dotnet run --project src/ReDows.Cli -- apps --enrich-winget         # inventory installed apps
dotnet run --project src/ReDows.Cli -- profile --from artifacts/apps.json --out profile   # InDows profile

Build a self-contained single-file release (no .NET needed on the target PC):

dotnet publish src/ReDows.Gui/ReDows.Gui.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true `
  -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true

📊 Status

Pre-release, actively evolving. Working today: machine-context discovery; a read-only scan with a completeness report and a per-file keep manifest; the YAML rule set; the installed-apps inventory (with winget correlation); reading Windows settings grouped by the InDows module that re-applies them; finding registry-only app secrets (locations only, never values); the desktop app (scan, review-and-sort, backup, restore); backup to disk/USB/network with an AES-256 secrets vault and locked-file recovery via a volume snapshot; duplicate detection; an optional local AI sorting assistant; a game-save catalog; and exporting a complete InDows-ready profile.

Still evolving: more backup destinations (FTP / web / cloud), reading other user accounts' offline hives, richer correlation between secrets and installed apps, and general polish. Formats and rules may still change before 1.0.

📄 License

Not chosen yet — a LICENSE file will be added. Until then, all rights reserved.