Product definition
Scoped the one-day build around one operational question: does this backup still contain exactly the files and bytes that were recorded?
Open Source / Python Automation / Daily Build
Backup Manifest
/ Overview
A dependency-free Python CLI that records a portable SHA-256 backup inventory and verifies missing, changed or unexpected files later.
A copied backup can look complete in a file browser even when a file is missing, altered or unexpectedly added, and checking every item manually does not scale.
/ Provided servicesClear thinking.
Clear thinking.
Practical delivery.
Integrity design
Combined stable relative paths, byte sizes and streaming SHA-256 checksums with explicit difference categories.
Python engineering
Implemented deterministic directory walking, safe manifest handling, text and JSON reports, and automation-friendly exit codes using only the standard library.
/ Solution
I built a standard-library Python CLI that walks a backup directory, streams SHA-256 hashes into a portable JSON manifest and later compares the directory with that recorded state.
/ Impact
Portable JSON inventory
Missing, changed and unexpected-file detection
Human-readable and JSON verification
Eleven passing standard-library tests
Python
Pathlib, hashlib, dataclasses and type hints create deterministic records while hashing files in chunks.
CLI & JSON
Argparse exposes create and verify commands with portable manifests, readable reports and machine-readable output.
Unittest
Eleven tests cover deterministic records, changed content, missing and unexpected files, symlink handling, manifest exclusion, JSON output and error codes.