AI Scripts
Small scripts I wrote with an AI for my own machine, and may as well share. Each does one thing, each asks before it destroys anything, and each is written to be read: the comment block at the top of every file explains why the code does what it does.
These scripts are not maintained. They were built for my own use, they solve my problem, and they are published as they are. I will not be fixing bugs, answering issues or shipping new versions.
That is fine, because you do not need me. Download the file, open it in Claude, ChatGPT or any other AI, and ask for what you want: "add a date to the filename", "swap zstd for gzip", "make it write to two disks". Every script is heavily commented precisely so an AI, or you, can read it and understand what is going on. That is how they were written in the first place.
Backup and restore
Two scripts that belong together: one packs folders onto an external disk, the other unpacks them again. They always copy themselves next to the archives, so the backup disk carries the tool that restores it.
backuptousb
Packs folders straight onto an external disk as one compressed archive per folder. Solves the problem where 50,000 small files crawl along at 2 MB/s on a disk that can do 100+. Progress bar with ETA, skips node_modules and .git, and an interrupted run never destroys the archive you already had.
Read more and download →extracttodisk
Unpacks the archives back onto disk. Before it writes anything it shows you exactly which existing files would be overwritten, then lets you choose: overwrite, extract to a fresh folder, or skip. With no answer it always takes the safe option.
Read more and download →Boot media and USB
One script for making a bootable USB, with the safety rails that are missing when you run dd by hand.
Browser and web development
Tools that run in the browser, built for working on CSS together with an AI.
Why they look the way they do
Every script opens with a long comment block: what it does, how to call it, and what the raw command behind it would be if you would rather type that yourself. That block is also the --help text, so the documentation cannot drift out of sync with the code. It is the code.
Inside the files you also get the reasoning. Why tar counts files rather than bytes, because byte-based progress goes badly wrong on trees of many small files. Why dd uses its own status=progress instead of pv, because a pipe measures how fast data reaches the RAM cache and shows 100% long before the disk has finished. These are easy mistakes to repeat and hard to guess your way out of.
How to make them yours
The bash scripts are ordinary bash in a single file. No dependencies beyond what a Linux machine already has, no installation, nothing running in the background. Download, make it executable, run it.
If you want different behaviour, the fastest route is to hand the whole file to an AI and describe the change in plain words. The scripts were written with that in mind: densely commented, one job per file, and the settings gathered in an EDIT ME block at the top. You do not need to know bash to move a default path or switch the compression.
Check before you run. These scripts write to disk. Read the file, or ask your AI to explain what it does, before running anything you downloaded from the internet, from here or anywhere else. isotousb.sh erases an entire disk when it writes, and there is no undo.
More to come
I keep writing small tools for myself. The ones that turn out useful enough to share end up here over time, sorted into the groups above.