I think the first thing a photographer should ask AI to build is a setup that sorts photos and videos automatically when you insert an SD card

If you're a photographer and you've just installed Claude Code, what should you have it build first? My answer is a setup that, the moment you put an SD card into your PC, automatically sorts the photos and videos into the folders where they belong. It's not a big deal, though...

After a shoot, you get home, put the card into the PC, make folders, split photos and videos and copy them, check that the copy went well, and empty the card. It's work you do every time, and it quietly eats up time, doesn't it? It's also the kind of work where small mistakes creep in.

I imagine plenty of photographers are curious about AI tools like Claude Code. So this post is for people who are about to install Claude Code, or who already have. You don't need to be able to write code. If you know what to decide and what to ask for, you can make it, so that's what I'll focus on.

Here are the three reasons I picked this one.

• It's a task that happens after every shoot, so you benefit every time
• The job is simple, and the rules are easy to explain in words
• Once it's built, you don't have to think about it anymore

Any task where you follow the same steps every time is a candidate for automation. For a photographer, I think importing the card comes first on that list.

What I had it build

It works like this.

1. Put the SD card into the PC
2. It automatically finds only the photos and videos on the card
3. Photos are copied to Photos/<camera name>/, and videos to Videos/<camera name>/<date>/ (*The photo folder is the one I set as Lightroom's auto-import folder)
4. It checks that the copied contents are correct
5. Only the files that were confirmed are deleted from the card
6. When it's done, it tells me with a Windows notification

In my case, for example, the destination looks like this.

Photos/
  LUMIX/
    P1000001.JPG
    P1000002.RW2
Videos/
  LUMIX/
    2026-10-13/
      P1000003.MOV

It starts in the background when I log in to the PC, and checks every 3 seconds whether a card has been inserted. All I do is insert the card.

What I decided when I asked for it

This is the most important part. Since this setup deletes things from the card, I decided clearly, up front, what it may do and what it must never do.

1. Limit which cards it works on

It only runs when the volume label (the card's name) matches what I specified, and the card also has a DCIM or PRIVATE folder. If I plug in an external hard drive or a USB stick, nothing happens. Without this, it could easily move important data by mistake.

2. Limit which files it touches

The extensions of photos and videos are listed explicitly. It doesn't touch any other file, even if it's on the card. Companion files that the camera creates, and anything outside DCIM and PRIVATE, are left as they are.

3. "Move" means copy, verify, then delete

It doesn't delete a file just because the copy finished. It compares the size and parts of the beginning and end of the file, and only the files it can confirm have identical contents are deleted from the card. You could verify with a hash of the whole file, but with 100GB-class cards that would double the time spent reading everything again, so I went with checking the beginning and end.

If a file with the same name but different contents already exists at the destination, it neither overwrites nor deletes. It leaves the file on the card. It also leaves 0-byte files alone, since they may be the result of a write that failed halfway.

I also had it include a mode that doesn't copy or delete anything, and just writes "what it would do" to the log. At first I used this to confirm that the destination paths and the file counts were what I expected.

4. The day changes at 3 a.m.

If you shoot late into the night, you sometimes cross over to the next date, so anything shot before 3 a.m. is treated as belonging to the previous day.

5. Notifications and a log

I get a notification on the PC at the start and at the end. It includes the number of files, the size, and the number of failures or conflicts. A detailed record is kept in a log file.

6. What I noticed

1. The date-shift problem

I've actually built a similar card-import setup on a Raspberry Pi too. That's a story for another post, and I'll write it up at some point. But on that one, Linux misread the times on the exFAT card, and the dates came out shifted. Windows reads the times correctly. I also confirmed with exiftool that the modification time of a LUMIX video file is the time the recording ended.

So a video whose recording crosses midnight goes into the folder for the date it ended.

Connecting it to Lightroom and the like

In my setup, it only goes as far as collecting everything in a shared folder. Software like Lightroom has an Auto Import feature that automatically imports files placed in a specified folder.

If you specify a folder, then just placing photo files such as JPG or RAW in it and opening Lightroom is enough to have them imported automatically.

An example of how to ask Claude Code

I think a request to the AI might look something like this.

On a Windows PC, please build a setup that automatically sorts and imports photos and videos when I insert an SD card.

- Only cards whose volume label is "LUMIX" and that have a DCIM folder
- Photos (JPG, RAW) go to Photos/<label>/, and videos go to Videos/<label>/<date>/
- After copying, verify the contents, and delete from the card only the files that were confirmed
- If a file with the same name but different contents exists, don't overwrite or delete it, and write it to the log
- Make it possible to check things first in a "dry run" mode that changes nothing
- Show a Windows notification when it's done

The key is to write not only what you want it to do, but also what it must not touch.

Things to be careful about

Since it deletes files from the card, I think you shouldn't hand over everything from the start.

1. Start with copy only (don't delete from the card), and watch it for a few days
2. Check the destination and the file counts with a dry run
3. If it looks fine, switch to move

I started with a dry run, checked the result and the log, and only then ran it for real.

Wrapping up

Importing after a shoot now comes down to just inserting the card. That alone makes things quietly easier. When you come home tired from a shoot, you want to have as little left to do as possible, right? You want to put away the camera and lenses quickly, too.

That's my recommendation for photographers who are thinking about what to have Claude Code build first!

With AI, I feel the barrier on the software side has dropped a lot. Most of the things you think "I'd like to do this" about can be done quickly. (As long as they're simple...) Which means the remaining problem is the hardware side. A small PC like the Raspberry Pi is portable, so I thought it might hold all kinds of features a photographer needs, and that's what I'm experimenting with at the moment. I want a nice case, so I want a 3D printer, and if I'm buying a 3D printer, I want a 3D scanner too... There's too much I want to do 🥹

The end