devsweep

Where did 200 GB go on my dev machine?

A disk cleaner for developers. devsweep finds the space your tooling quietly eats (node_modules, Docker layers, virtualenvs, Xcode caches, local AI models) and removes it with per-ecosystem rules that know what's safe.

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$ devsweep scan --min-size 1GB
scanned ~ · 9 items · 1.1s

  ECOSYSTEM       SOURCE      ITEM                                       FREES     AGE
▲ AI models       ollama      llama3.1:70b                             39.6 GB     5mo
▲ Docker          docker      unused images (14)                       22.3 GB       —
▲ AI models       hf          meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct         16.1 GB     3mo
● Docker          docker      build cache                              12.9 GB       —
● Xcode           xcode       DerivedData/Ledger                        8.4 GB     2mo
■ Xcode           xcode       Archives/2025-11-02                       6.2 GB    11mo
● Rust            cargo       ~/code/tracer/target                      5.7 GB     6mo
▲ Python          venv        ~/code/rag-eval/.venv                     4.8 GB     4mo
● Node            npm         ~/code/dashboard/node_modules             1.9 GB     8mo

● safe 28.9 GB   ▲ caution 82.8 GB   ■ guarded 6.2 GB   total 117.9 GB

Why devsweep

General-purpose cleaners see a 2 GB folder. devsweep sees a node_modules next to a package-lock.json, knows npm ci restores it, and tells you so before deleting it.

• Knows what's safe. node_modules only counts next to a package.json, and target/ only next to a Cargo.toml or pom.xml. With no lockfile, the item is downgraded. If it's committed to git, it's refused.
• Deletes like the tool would. Docker gets docker prune, Ollama gets ollama rm, and Go gets go clean. When a tool keeps its own state, devsweep goes through it instead of around it.
• Counts what you actually get back. It reports allocated blocks, not apparent size. Files hard-linked from a pnpm store, uv cache or conda pkgs are shown as shared, because deleting them frees nothing.
• Understands local AI models. It reads Ollama manifests and the Hugging Face hub cache directly, so models show up by name. Weights shared between tags are counted once.
• One binary, two interfaces. A TUI for browsing and choosing, and a scriptable CLI with JSON output. It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows with no runtime.

Installation

Go 1.23+

go install github.com/Asymtode712/devsweep@latest

From source

git clone https://github.com/Asymtode712/devsweep.git
cd devsweep && make build

Quick start

devsweep                                   # interactive TUI over your home directory
devsweep scan --min-size 500MB             # read-only report, largest first
devsweep clean --older-than 30d --dry-run  # what a safe cleanup would remove
devsweep clean --older-than 30d            # do it (asks first)

In the TUI, press s to pick every safe item untouched for 30 days, review with d, and confirm.

Key	Action	Key	Action
↑ ↓ tab	move, switch panes	/ o	filter, cycle sort
space	select item	d	review and delete
a	select all in view (never guarded)	t	toggle move-to-Trash
s	smart-pick safe + stale	r q	rescan, quit

Usage

devsweep [paths...]          interactive TUI (default root: your home directory)
devsweep scan [paths...]     list what can be reclaimed
devsweep clean [paths...]    delete matching items (asks first)
devsweep rules               show every rule and why it's considered safe
devsweep version

Flag	Applies to	Description
--eco LIST	scan, clean	Ecosystems or sources: ai, docker, node, python, xcode, rust, go, jvm, ollama, hf, …
--safety LEVEL	scan, clean	Highest level to include: safe · caution · guarded (clean defaults to safe)
--older-than AGE	scan, clean	Only items untouched for 30d, 2w, 6mo, 1y
--min-size SIZE	scan, clean	Only items freeing at least 500MB, 2GB
--no-global / --no-projects	scan, clean	Skip global caches, or skip the project walk
--json	scan, rules	Machine-readable output
--dry-run	clean	Show what would be deleted; touch nothing
--yes	clean	Don't prompt (for scripts and cron)
--trash	clean	Move to Trash instead of deleting (macOS, Linux)

Full reference with recipes: documentation.

Safety model

Every item gets one of three levels, and the level decides what can select it.

	Level	Meaning	Selected by
●	safe	Cache or build output that tools recreate on their own	clean by default, s, a
▲	caution	Reproducible, but slow or heavy to restore (model weights, venvs, module caches)	--safety caution, a, space
■	guarded	May hold something nothing can recreate (Xcode archives, Docker volumes, AVDs)	only by hand, after typing delete

Right before anything is removed, each item is checked again:

• The project manifest must still be there.
• The path must not be tracked in git.
• The path must not be (or have become) a symlink.
• The path must not be your home directory, a cache root, or a top-level directory.

Every deletion is appended to ~/.local/state/devsweep/history.jsonl (%LOCALAPPDATA%\devsweep on Windows), together with the command that restores it.

What it covers

Ecosystem	Items
AI models	Ollama, Hugging Face hub, datasets and Xet caches, LM Studio, PyTorch hub, Whisper, llama.cpp, vLLM
Docker	Build cache, unused images, stopped containers, unused volumes
Node	node_modules, .next / .nuxt / .turbo / .svelte-kit and friends, npm, yarn, pnpm, bun, Playwright, Puppeteer, Electron, Deno
Python	Virtualenvs (by pyvenv.cfg), pytest / mypy / ruff / tox caches, pip, uv, Poetry, conda
Xcode	DerivedData, device support, archives, simulator caches, CocoaPods, SwiftPM .build
Rust · Go · JVM	Cargo target and registry, Go build and module caches, Maven, Gradle
Android	System images, AVDs, Flutter / Dart build output
Other	CMake, Zig, .NET, Elixir, Haskell, Composer, Terraform, ccache / sccache, Bazel, Homebrew, JetBrains

Run devsweep rules for the full catalog, or browse it in the docs.

How it works

1. Discover. A parallel walk of your project roots matches artifact folders against their manifests, while known per-user cache locations and tool metadata (Docker, Ollama, Hugging Face) are read concurrently. Symlinks are never followed. On macOS, privacy-protected folders are skipped unless passed explicitly.
2. Measure. Allocated blocks are summed per item, and hardlinks are tracked by inode. That's how bytes shared with something outside the item are reported separately from what deleting it frees.
3. Clean. Each item is re-validated, then removed through the tool's own command where one exists, or deleted (or moved to the Trash) and logged.

Known limitations

• APFS clones (uv's default on macOS) share blocks invisibly, so a cloned venv may free less than shown.
• Docker Desktop frees space inside its VM. The host gets it back as the VM disk is trimmed.
• Move-to-Trash isn't available on Windows, and Windows sizes don't account for hardlinks.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Most new ecosystems are a single rule in internal/rules/rules.go.

make build    # build ./devsweep
make test     # go vet + unit tests
make dist     # cross-compiled binaries in dist/
make site     # regenerate the rule catalog and build the website (site/)

The website is React + TypeScript (Vite) in site/. It's deployed on Vercel from the site/ directory (see site/vercel.json). After changing rules, run make site and commit site/src/data/rules.json; CI fails if it's stale.