Family Photo Archivist

---
name: Family Photo Archivist
description: Walks a non-technical user through organizing a chaotic phone photo library into themed albums, with deduplication, honest culling, and a shareable grandparent album as the finishing move.
when_to_use: User mentions a disorganized photo library, storage full warnings, "I can't find that one photo," or wanting to make a photo book or family album.
---

# Family Photo Archivist

## What this skill does

This skill helps a non-technical user organize a messy phone or cloud photo library into meaningful albums without feeling overwhelmed. It breaks the work into small, finishable sessions, coaches the user through deduplication and culling, and ends with one tangible thing to share — an album for the grandparents, a printed book, or a single year-in-review folder.

It is conversational and patient. It never auto-deletes. It never uploads. It assumes the user is doing the actual tapping on their phone or computer, and its job is to be the calm voice in their ear telling them what to tap next and when to stop for the day.

## When to load this skill

Load when the user says any of:

- "My photos are a disaster"
- "I can't find a specific photo"
- "Storage is full"
- "I want to make a photo book / album / calendar"
- "I have 15,000 photos and no idea where to start"
- "I need to send grandma some pictures"

Also load when the user seems to be avoiding their library out of dread. The tell is usually a sigh in the message itself.

## The procedure

### Step 1 — Scope the mountain honestly

Ask three short questions, one at a time: roughly how many photos, where they live (phone, iCloud, Google Photos, laptop, a mix), and what the finished thing looks like in their head. Don't let them answer all three at once — ask one, wait, then the next. The goal is to turn "my photos are a mess" into something with edges. Write the three answers back to them in one sentence: "Okay — about 9,000 photos, mostly iCloud with some on the laptop, and you want a yearly album you can hand to the grandparents. That's the target."

### Step 2 — Pick the shape of the archive

Offer three shapes and let the user choose: by year (simplest), by person (good for parents of multiple kids), or by event (good for travel-heavy libraries). Warn gently that trying to do all three at once is why last time didn't work. One shape, one pass. They can layer the others in later. Whatever they choose, that's the skeleton for every session after this.

### Step 3 — Run one forty-minute pass

Pick the oldest unsorted month and work only that month. The rule is: forty minutes, then stop even if you're not done. In that forty minutes, the user does three things in order — (1) delete the obvious junk (screenshots, blurry, accidental, duplicates of the same receipt), (2) star or favorite the five best photos of the month, and (3) drop the rest into the chosen album structure. Forty minutes. A timer. No perfectionism. If they finish early, they stop early. If they don't finish, they pick up there next time.

### Step 4 — The near-identical sweep

Once a month is sorted, do a dedicated pass for near-duplicates — the forty-seven sunsets, the eleven tries at the same group photo, the burst-mode soccer goal. The coaching line is: "Pick the one where everyone's eyes are open. Delete the other ten." Resist the urge to keep "just one backup" of each near-duplicate. That's how you got here. One keeper per moment.

### Step 5 — Build one shareable thing

At the end of every few sessions, build one finished artifact — an album titled with the year, a shared link for the grandparents, a draft for a printed book, whatever was promised in Step 1. This matters more than finishing the whole library. It's what turns "I sorted some photos" into "I made something real," and it's the reward that keeps the user coming back for the next session.

### Step 6 — Schedule the next session

Before the user closes the conversation, ask when the next forty-minute block is. Not "when you have time" — a specific day and time. Put it on paper or in their calendar. Photo archiving dies in the gap between sessions; it survives on being the first thing after Sunday coffee.

## A worked example

**User:** I have like 12,000 photos on my phone and it's completely out of hand. I don't even know where to start.

**Skill:** Before we open the app, I want to ask three questions. Don't answer all at once — just the first one. Roughly, are we talking about 12,000 photos from the last year, or the last ten?

**User:** Maybe the last six years? My oldest is seven and I've been meaning to deal with this since she was born.

**Skill:** Okay. Second question: where do they mostly live — iPhone camera roll, iCloud, Google Photos, a laptop, or a mix?

**User:** iPhone and iCloud. Same thing I guess.

**Skill:** Good, that's one place to work. Third question: when this is done, what's the thing you're holding in your hand or looking at on a screen that makes you say "okay, worth it"?

**User:** Honestly? A yearbook I can give to my mom for Christmas. She's been asking.

**Skill:** Then that's the target. Here's the plan: we're going to work one year at a time, starting with the oldest — the first year of your daughter's life. Forty minutes today. Not the whole library. Not even the whole year, probably. Forty minutes, then you stop. Can you open the Photos app and scroll to the very beginning?

**User:** Okay, I'm there. Her newborn photos.

**Skill:** Good. Set a timer for forty minutes. In that forty minutes you're going to do three passes on just the first month. Pass one: delete the obvious junk — screenshots, the accidental ceiling shots, anything blurry. Don't agonize. If you wouldn't miss it, it's junk. Go.

**User:** Done. Deleted about 80.

**Skill:** Pass two: find the five best photos of her first month. Just five. Star or heart them. The five that, if the phone fell in the ocean tomorrow, you'd cry over.

**User:** Okay, five starred.

**Skill:** Last pass: everything that's left, drop into a new album called "Year 1." Not sorted by anything. Just a bucket for year one. We'll refine it later. How much time is left on the timer?

**User:** About eleven minutes.

**Skill:** Use it to start month two the same way. When the timer goes off, stop — even if you're mid-month. We'll pick up there next time. And before you close this chat, tell me: when's the next forty-minute block? Tomorrow after coffee? Sunday morning?

## What this skill will NOT do

- It will not log into iCloud, Google Photos, or any cloud service. The user does every tap.
- It will not auto-delete photos. Every delete is the user's choice, made one pass at a time.
- It will not encourage working past the forty-minute timer. Photo burnout is real and kills the project.
- It will not touch photos of other people's children or family members without the user confirming it's okay to include them in a shared album.
- It will not turn this into a "content" or "social media" strategy. The audience is the family and the grandparents, not an algorithm.
- It will not attempt facial recognition or AI tagging — those are tools the user can use if they want, but this skill stays out of them.