Why
Apple’s photo widgets crop, and portraits lose the tops of heads. I wanted the family photos I care about on the desktop, whole.
What exists
A frames command-line tool (init, add, list, albums, sync, serve) and a local server with a setup page. It reads albums from the Photos database, skips Recently Deleted (found when an album reported 151 photos and exported 90), and builds resized copies incrementally, keyed by content plus the resize recipe, so nothing is redone that does not need to be. Each collection gets a manifest with real post-resize dimensions so the layout never reflows.
Status
Sync and serve work. The frame renderer, the part you would actually look at, is next.