Organizing Data Through the Lens of Deduplication

Periscope is an open source CLI tool built to solve the problem of 500+ GB of duplicate files on a home file server. Unlike traditional duplicate finders (fdupes, jdupes) that just list duplicates, Periscope takes an interactive approach: it scans and caches duplicate info in a database, then provides duplicate-aware commands mirroring standard Unix utilities — `psc ls` highlights duplicates in directory listings, `psc rm` only deletes files if a duplicate exists elsewhere, preventing accidental data loss. The tool was born from real-world patterns of disorganization: unorganized media alongside organized directories, stale machine backups, manually versioned documents, and cross-user duplicates.