A file manager knows where a file is. An asset library also knows what you said about it: its tags, its category, which bundle it belongs to and which projects use it. The moment someone renames that file in Explorer or Finder, those two views of the world disagree.

AssetHoard is a local-first desktop asset manager for indie game devs, built in Rust and Tauri. Watched folders let you point it at directories you already organise by hand, and it keeps the library in step. Version 0.2.4 rewrites how watched folders handle files that change underneath them.

The cases that break naive watching

A file watcher reports events. Turning those events into "this is the same asset as before" is where it gets interesting.

Renames and moves. The event stream for a move is not always a tidy rename. Moves across directories, or batches of them from a sync tool, can arrive as separate removals and creations.…