Clean Machine

Machine Cleanup — Orchestrator

Audits a developer's machine state and removes abandoned tools, orphaned caches, and unused toolchains — without breaking active workflows. Capability metadata (route triggers, prerequisites, load map, artifact contract) lives in [routing.yaml](routing.yaml). Agent table + execution layers + routing rules: [references/agent-manifest.md](references/agent-manifest.md). Methodology: [references/playbook.md](references/playbook.md).

Core question: Is this folder still owned by an installed tool I actively use, or is it leftover state from something I no longer have?

When To Use

• New laptop setup; need to start clean.
• After trying many AI tools you've now abandoned.
• Disk is full or near-full.
• Before passing the machine to someone else.
• Standalone — no upstream gate required.

When NOT To Use

• Cleaning source code → /clean-code.
• Triaging files in Desktop/, Documents/, Downloads/, Pictures/, Movies/, Music/, Public/, or cloud-mount symlinks — those need human review.
• Tool ownership unclear AND you can't identify the owning tool — surface as NEEDS_CONTEXT first.

Critical Gates (The 6 Golden Rules) — load first

All 6 fire under --fast, Single-Agent Fallback, and dry-run modes:

1. Never delete user data without explicit confirmation. Files in Desktop/, Documents/, Downloads/, Pictures/, Movies/, Music/, Public/, and any contents under cloud-mount symlinks (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud) are off-limits to bulk action. Surface findings; defer execution to the user.
2. No auth surprise. Any folder containing tokens, OAuth state, refresh tokens, JWTs, session cookies, or PKCE artifacts must be flagged BEFORE deletion with the exact re-auth command the user will need (gh auth login, gcloud auth login, vercel login). Filename patterns: [references/auth-credential-patterns.md](references/auth-credential-patterns.md).
3. Process-check before nuking active state. If a folder is being written to right now (mtime within 5 minutes, or a .pid/.sock/-wal file exists), check pgrep for the owning app. Quit cleanly via AppleScript or warn the user before deletion. Never delete files an open SQLite WAL points to.
4. Side-effect awareness in shell startup. Before deleting a directory referenced in .zshenv, .zshrc, .bashrc, .profile, .tcshrc (e.g., . "$HOME/.cargo/env"), comment out or update the offending line. Otherwise every new terminal throws errors.
5. Distinguish regenerable cache from unique state. Anything inside XDG-compliant ~/.cache/ is throwaway by definition — surface for fast nuke. Anything outside ~/.cache/ requires per-target classification: identify the owning tool, then decide.
6. One target at a time with explicit confirmation. No bulk multi-target deletion. The user must confirm each target by name (or pick from a coded list). Track cumulative reclaim across targets.

Session limits: target ~25 deletions per cleanup session. After 10, generate an interim summary. If the user has rejected 5+ recommendations in a row, stop and ask if the scope is wrong.

Critic FAIL: identifies the specific deletion that violated a rule; safe-nuke-agent restores from backup (or instructs reinstall steps); reports. Full critic-FAIL handling + bulk-action pause triggers: [references/anti-patterns.md](references/anti-patterns.md).

Before Starting

Apply [references/_shared/before-starting-check.md](references/_shared/before-starting-check.md). Then:

• Mode resolution ([references/_shared/mode-resolver.md](references/_shared/mode-resolver.md)). budget: deep. Auto-downgrades to fast for single-folder targets → Single-Agent Fallback. --fast forces single-agent regardless of scope. All 6 Critical Gates fire in every mode.
• references/_shared/execution-policy.md — session execution profile (single-vs-multi)
• Read .forsvn/index/manifest.json for prior machine-cleanup runs; surface staleness if a recent run covered this scope.
• Read docs/forsvn/experience/technical.md for prior protected-paths list (machine-cleanup excluded paths).

Pre-Dispatch

Run Pre-Dispatch ([references/_shared/pre-dispatch-protocol.md](references/_shared/pre-dispatch-protocol.md)). Needed dimensions: scope (dotfolders / caches / packages / runtimes / all), aggressiveness (conservative / moderate / aggressive), excluded paths.

Read order:

1. Machine scan: du -sh ~/.*, df -h, package globals (npm/brew/bun/cargo/go/pipx) — see scripts/inventory.sh.
2. Experience: docs/forsvn/experience/technical.md for prior protected-paths list.

Warm Start + Cold Start prompts: [references/pre-dispatch-prompts.md](references/pre-dispatch-prompts.md).

Artifact Contract

• Path: docs/forsvn/artifacts/meta-clean-machine--.md (flat v2 grammar; stack is meta — machine-cleanup records are meta-stack snapshots).
• Lifecycle: snapshot — dated, immutable record of one cleanup run.
• Frontmatter: skill, version, date, status (DONE / DONEWITHCONCERNS / BLOCKED / NEEDSCONTEXT), stack (=meta), review_surface (=none — snapshot defaults to decision_state: not_required), total_reclaimed, lifecycle, produced_by, provenance. v2 schema in [references/_shared/artifact-contract-template.md](references/shared/artifact-contract-template.md).
• Required sections: Scope, Summary. Targets Nuked + Targets Kept + Side Effects Fixed + Re-Auth Commands + Manual Follow-ups when applicable. Critic Verdict optional.
• Consumed by: clean-artifacts (staleness signal scanning), forsvn (state detection), operator (history audit).

Full template + filename conventions + version-increment rule: [references/report-template.md](references/report-template.md).

Multi-Agent + Single-Agent

7 agents in 3 layers — full table + execution diagram + dispatch protocol + routing rules: [references/agent-manifest.md](references/agent-manifest.md).

Single-Agent Fallback (mode downgrades to fast):

1. Skip multi-agent dispatch.
2. Inspect the target — list contents, sizes, last-modified, identify owning tool per [references/tool-ownership-heuristics.md](references/tool-ownership-heuristics.md).
3. Classify per [references/classification-vocabulary.md](references/classification-vocabulary.md) (active / load-bearing / abandoned / orphan / cache / empty / user-data).
4. Surface auth/process/side-effect risks per the 6 Critical Gates.
5. Recommend nuke or keep with reasoning.
6. Wait for explicit user confirmation.
7. Execute with side-effect fixes.
8. Verify post-state.
9. Save artifact per [references/report-template.md](references/report-template.md).

Anti-Patterns

Read [references/anti-patterns.md](references/anti-patterns.md) before applying any deletion that smells off — bulk, auth-bearing, mid-process, shell-rc-referenced, package manager + data split. "When NOT to nuke" + bulk-action pause triggers also live there.

Durable Rules (protected)

Completion Status

• DONE — all approved removals executed, totals reported (total_reclaimed), no orphaned references in shell-rcs.
• DONEWITHCONCERNS — cleanup applied but some folders deferred to manual user triage (user-data dirs, ambiguous ownership); report enumerates what was deferred.
• BLOCKED — destructive removal would touch user data without confirmation; halted pending explicit decision.
• NEEDS_CONTEXT — tool ownership unclear for some folders (no entry in tool-ownership-map.md and user can't identify the owning tool); ask before removing.

Chain Position

Previous: none | Next: none (standalone). Re-run triggers: new laptop setup, after abandoning many AI tools, disk-full, before passing the machine to someone else.

Next Step

• User asks "what package managers should I prune next" → dispatch package-inventory-agent standalone.
• User wants to dotfile-track the resulting clean state → suggest chezmoi or dotbot.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: hungv47
• Source: hungv47/meta-skills
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://skills.forsvn.com/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.