In a system for managing digital assets in a distributed computing environment, meta-data for the digital assets is generated by clients of the system and stored separately from the digital assets, such as at a central location. A computer system operating under control of an operating system performs categorization of the digital assets using an agent operating in user space of the computer system. The agent receives an I/O request identifying a digital asset and applies categorization information to the identified digital asset based on the received I/O request without intervention by an end-user of the computer system, and the categorization information is stored as part of an asset identification tag associated with the digital asset.