Classification earns its keep
A clipboard item arrives as a collection of pasteboard representations, not as a tidy product category. The app has to decide what it is before it can decide how to preview it, search it, transform it, or paste it back.
Pastry currently resolves that decision into seven types: text, URL, code, color, data, image, and file. Seven is not a branding number. It is the smallest set that gives each kind of clip meaningfully different behavior.
A new type has to change what the clip can do, not only how its badge reads.
The plain-looking three
Text is the fallback, and that makes it more important than it sounds. URLs gain a domain-aware preview and a direct open action. Code keeps whitespace legible and becomes searchable without pretending every snippet needs a language detector.
The categories overlap on purpose. A URL is still text when it returns to another application. The type describes the useful behavior Pastry can add while the clip is in the drawer, not a permanent claim about the bytes.
The types that transform
Colors can move between hex, RGB, HSL, and OKLCH. Structured data can move between JSON, YAML, TOML, TOON, and CSV. The selected representation is the one that gets pasted, so conversion is an arrow-key action rather than a trip through a separate tool.
Images and files need different previews, different storage paths, and different pasteboard representations on the way out. Screenshots add two more useful indexes: the words Vision can read inside them and a small palette of dominant colors.
The eighth type test
Rich text, email addresses, terminal commands, and snippets have all sounded like plausible additions. So far, each has either been a presentation of text or a behavior better expressed as a tag, action, or expansion keyword.
That is the test for number eight. If it requires a new capture rule, preview, search model, and paste behavior, it may be a type. If it only wants a different icon, it is probably one of the seven wearing a hat.