File Naming Rules

Status: house convention for committed filenames. Every file committed to the repository follows these conventions: lowercase, dash-separated, ASCII, ISO dates. This is the filename companion to commits.md (the same discipline applied to commit text): a name a future reader can predict, type, and glob without surprises.

General rules

Lowercase only: no uppercase letters in filenames.
Dashes for separators: use - instead of spaces, underscores, or camelCase.
No spaces: ever.
No special characters: no accented letters, (), [], &. Transliterate accented characters to plain ASCII (for example, c-with-caron to c, s-with-caron to s, d-with-stroke to dj).
No trailing dots: remove any dot before the file extension.
ASCII only: filenames must be plain ASCII.

Date format in filenames

Always use the ISO format YYYY-MM-DD:

30.11.2023 -> 2023-11-30
11.03.2024. -> 2024-03-11
Mar 24, 2025 -> 2025-03-24

Document naming patterns

Scanned documents

Scan MMM DD, YYYY at HH.MM.pdf    -> scan-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.pdf
Scan DD.MM.YYYY. at HH.MM.pdf     -> scan-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.pdf
Scan DD MMM YYYY at HH.MM.pdf     -> scan-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.pdf

Photos

IMG_XXXX.jpeg                      -> keep as-is (acceptable)
IMG_XXXX.HEIC                      -> convert to IMG_XXXX.jpg
Photo DD-MM-YYYY.heic              -> photo-YYYY-MM-DD.jpg (convert + rename)

Dated documents

<type>-<description>-YYYY-MM-DD.<ext>

Use a date suffix only when the document is date-specific; omit it otherwise. Neutral examples:

invoice-2024-03-01.pdf
design-notes-2025-06-14.md
release-checklist.md          # not date-specific, no suffix

Renaming existing files

When renaming, use git mv to preserve history:

git mv "Old File Name.pdf" "old-file-name.pdf"

Commit: rename: normalize filenames

Audit (before any processing)

Run these in the repo before reporting counts:

# Files with spaces
find <repo> -name "* *" -not -path "*/.git/*" -not -name "*.md"

# Files with uppercase
find <repo> -regex ".*/[^/]*[A-Z][^/]*" -not -path "*/.git/*" -not -name "README*" -not -name "*.md"

# Files with underscores (excluding .git)
find <repo> -name "*_*" -not -path "*/.git/*" -not -name "*.md"

# HEIC files
find <repo> \( -name "*.heic" -o -name "*.HEIC" \) -not -path "*/.git/*"

A clean repo returns nothing from the first three queries (the README and .md exclusions cover the conventional exceptions).

Skip list

Some asset paths legitimately carry vendor-supplied names and are exempt from the audit. Document the skip paths per repo (for example, browser-extension resource folders, generated asset bundles, vendor media dumps). Keep the list short and justified: every exemption is a name a reader cannot predict, so it must earn its place.

Companion rules

commits.md: the same lowercase/dashed/ASCII/ISO discipline applied to commit messages and branch names.
no-shortcuts-first-principles.md: an unpredictable filename committed "just this once" is a small shortcut that compounds across a tree.

Why this exists

Filenames are an interface. A predictable scheme means a reader can guess a path, a glob can match a set, and a sort orders by date without a parser. Mixed case, spaces, and locale-specific characters break globs, confuse case-insensitive filesystems, and force quoting. The convention costs nothing at creation time and saves every later reader.

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