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Feature Request: Automatic deletion of project when underlying folder is deleted #286
Description
Using work-trees with this tool has been fabulous because the AI can easily just add the worktree as a project and start using it, including any changes then that it makes.
But, as one uses work-trees and changes and then removes them those projects stay requiring manual deletion.
My feature request is to also allow automatic deletion when the watcher determines that the root folder for a project is gone so that when work trees are cleaned up, the projects are also automatically cleaned up.
Thx.
Reacted by Ivan Dergachev and Pcristin
Activity
DeusData commentedon Jun 18, 2026
Thanks for the request, @ehendrix23 🙏 This is the natural cleanup counterpart to the worktree workflows in #351: if the watcher already knows a project root, it can detect when that root disappears and reclaim the project. The care here is avoiding accidental deletion on a transient unmount or network filesystem blip, so we'd want a grace mechanism (mark stale after N missed checks, delete only after a sustained absence) rather than deleting on the first missing root event. Tracking it. Thanks!
pcristin commentedon Jun 24, 2026
Suggested behavior:
That gives the worktree cleanup UX requested here without risking data loss from transient unmounts, network filesystem hiccups, or short-lived path visibility issues.
I would keep this scoped separately from #573. Overlay indexing can later define branch/context garbage collection, but this issue can solve the simpler project-list cleanup problem for deleted roots.
feat(watcher): prune projects whose root stays missing (ENOENT-only, …