Molt, a native macOS front end built on Filee's engine (and a CLI proposal)

[yavuzmeteafsar]

Hi, and thank you for Filee!

I'm a computer engineering student from Turkey, and I've built Molt, a small native macOS app (Swift/AppKit) that uses Filee as its conversion engine:
https://github.com/yavuzmeteafsar/molt-mac

Instead of the donut at the cursor it offers a classic Mac window: a file list with per-file status, a column-based format picker with search, a progress sheet with Filee's log, and "Convert with Molt" in Finder's Services menu. It needs no Accessibility permission, which is the main reason I wanted a different front end on the Mac.

How it uses Filee:

• Filee is a git submodule pinned to v2.1.0. CI publishes Filee.Cli self-contained for osx-arm64 and osx-x64, runs your fetch-portable-engines.ps1 for rhwp and 7-Zip, and embeds the result in Molt.app.
• Molt only talks to the CLI: formats, formats <id> and convert, reading the per-file ok / fail / skip lines as they're printed to show live progress.
• Filee is credited at the top of the README and in the About panel, and its LICENSE and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES ship inside the app. The README also says Molt isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Filee. If you'd like the attribution worded differently, I'm happy to change it.

The CLI worked very well embedded like this. A few things I ran into, in case they're useful:

1. filee formats <id> doesn't list folder, although convert --to folder works for archives. Molt adds it for archive formats itself.
2. Molt parses the human-readable output of formats, which could break if the wording changes. Would a --json option for formats be welcome?
3. The one thing a front end can't do today is install the optional engines (LibreOffice, FFmpeg, Pandoc, ...); only the app's Settings → Engines can.

For 3, I'd like to propose something like:

filee engines [--json]
filee engines install <id>
filee engines remove <id>

reusing the app's existing download and verification code, so the CLI and other front ends get exactly the same tested behaviour. If you think this fits Filee, I'd be glad to open a pull request. I'd rather ask first than send a PR in a direction you don't want, so any preference on naming, output or scope is very welcome.

Thanks again for making Filee open source.
Yavuz

[KnifeLemon]

Thanks Yavuz, Molt looks great, and the attribution is fine as it is. On the CLI:

1. formats <id> missing folder is a bug; a PR is welcome.
2. formats --json is welcome too, so front ends don't depend on the wording.
3. filee engines is a good fit, as long as it reuses the app's download and verification code exactly. Please open an issue with the commands and the JSON shape first, and we'll agree on it there before the PR.