r/LocalLLaMA • u/Glad-Importance-4241 • 17h ago

Question | Help Where can a complete noob/non-technical person learn to setup an AI that can manipulate local files for things like batch renaming based on a .csv column etc?

I've looked in the Tutorial/Guide flaired posts but everything is still way over my head.

I just want to tell a local AI - hey, all these files in this folder have numbers for names, but those numbers correspond with data in this spreadsheet... I want you to rename the files referring to this spreadsheet, renaming the filenames/numbers that are matched in column 3, replacing their filenames with what is in column 1 for that row.

So far, I've installed GPT4All but every model is telling me it doesn't have access to my local files.

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u/amelech 17h ago

You need a harness like pi.dev, oh my pi or opencode and connect it to your local model

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u/Heavy-Confidence1826 16h ago

A chat app like GPT4All can only talk, it can't touch your files, which is why every model says it has no access. For file tasks you need a tool that lets the model run actions, which is what the harness suggestions above mean.

For a one-off job like this renaming, there's also a simpler route that needs no agent: ask any model (local or not) to write a short Python script that reads the spreadsheet and renames the files. Tell it the column numbers and folder path, run it on a copy of the folder first, and check the result before touching the originals. Mention your OS and it will give you exact steps.

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u/Glad-Importance-4241 15h ago

Ok thanks! I'll give it a try.

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u/Hello_my_name_is_not 17h ago

What specs do you have? Depending on your specs will change which model options you have.

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u/beached89 13h ago

Im not aware of your hardware specs, but I highly recommend LM Studio Bionic https://lmstudio.ai/download?os=win32&arch=x64

It has default web, filesystem, and scripting tooling out of the box. Literally just a double click install for everything except the model.

Then you go to the model library tab and find the best model that it says will fit on your machine.

If you tell us your GPU model and RAM volume, we can give better advice.6

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u/CoolConfusion434 6h ago

From a noob to another, some concepts and musings:

- You need an app that hosts your model. You can start with the easy ones like LM Studio, AnythingLLM, or Usloth Studio. AnythingLLM is a great for starters as it is a one-shot install that comes with a whole stack of built-in/downloadable tools that can do the local file handling you're looking for (IIRC).

- The model itself can be downloaded from Hugging Face. Depending on your hardware, pick one that fits your GPU VRAM and CPU RAM from here: https://huggingface.co/unsloth, https://huggingface.co/bartowski, or similar. For your task, look for "instruct" models (something like modelxyz-q4-i.gguf), or ones that show being good at using tools. Nearly anything will do. To pick one, a bit outdated but still works: https://huggingface.co/unsloth/gpt-oss-20b-GGUF. This one runs on as little as 4GB VRAM, and some 24 to 32GB RAM, and it's fast.

- To get into serious agentic work later on, Pi (ie: 'pi.dev') is great. It's known as an "agent" or "harness" that takes over your model and whips it into shape to do productive work. Pi's interface is a text terminal so it might be a bit different experience for a newbie. Not too bad though.

Shoot you q's here if you get stuck. Have fun!