pacto

Archive an idle project folder into a single zip that lives inside it, so the folder stays visible as a marker of what used to be there.

C:\dev\old-project\        ->   C:\dev\old-project\
  src/ node_modules/ ...          old-project.zip

pacto unzip old-project puts it all back and deletes the zip.

Nothing is deleted until the archive has been verified: every entry is CRC-checked and the file count and total size are compared against the folder. If a locked file interrupts the delete, re-running pacto zip finds the good archive and finishes the job instead of re-zipping.

Install

pip install "pacto[all]"                 # CLI, interactive picker, MCP server
pip install pacto                        # core only, no picker and no MCP
pipx install "pacto[all]"                # or uv tool install, to keep it off your global env

From a checkout:

pip install -e ".[all]"

Use

pacto                      # interactive picker, ranked by best candidate
pacto scan                 # list folders: size, idle days, git state
pacto scan --min-size 500MB --idle 60d
pacto zip old-project      # archive it, then delete the contents
pacto unzip old-project    # restore in place

Where it works:

• the current directory when it is inside the default root (C:\dev)
• otherwise the default root itself
• --root D:\projects overrides both, and PACTO_ROOT changes the default

Only the direct children of that folder are candidates.

scan ranks by size × idle days, so a big folder untouched for a year comes before a big one you edited yesterday. Idle time is the newest file anywhere in the tree.

Safety

• The archive is verified before anything is deleted.
• Git repos with uncommitted or unpushed work are flagged, then archived anyway. .git goes into the zip, so history survives.
• Symlinks and Windows junctions are skipped, not followed, and are listed in the output.
• unzip refuses to run when the folder holds anything besides the archive, and rejects entries whose paths point outside it.
• Empty directories are preserved through the round trip.
• pacto never archives its own checkout.

MCP server

claude mcp add pacto -- pacto-mcp

Or in claude_desktop_config.json:

{ "mcpServers": { "pacto": { "command": "pacto-mcp" } } }

Tools: scan, suggest, zip, unzip. zip is gated: without confirm=true it only reports what would happen, so an agent cannot delete a project by accident.

Notes for synced folders

If the root is inside Dropbox, OneDrive or Syncthing, archiving deletes the files on every synced machine and then copies the zip to all of them. That is the intent, but it is a big transfer. For Syncthing, add (?d)*.zip.partial to .stignore on each machine so a half-written archive never syncs.

Tests

python tests/test_core.py

MIT licensed.