Brew Cleanup

Reclaim Homebrew disk space, then report what was freed.

Operates in report → confirm → execute order. The scope is chosen through an interactive question, not flags. After approval, run the cleanup autonomously.

Step 1: Check Homebrew

command -v brew >/dev/null 2>&1

If brew is not installed, stop and say so. Otherwise note the cache location: brew --cache.

Step 2: Dry-run report

Gather what each scope would do, without changing anything:

brew autoremove -n   # orphaned dependencies that would be uninstalled
brew cleanup -n      # old versions + stale cache; prints "This operation would free approximately N"

Report the orphan list from autoremove -n and the freed-space estimate from cleanup -n. Record baseline sizes of every location these scopes touch — not just the cache. brew cleanup removes old versions from the Cellar/Caskroom, and brew autoremove uninstalls formulae from the Cellar with little or no cache impact, so a cache-only measurement under-reports (and reads as 0 for autoremove). Capture all three:

du -sh "$(brew --cache)" "$(brew --cellar)" "$(brew --prefix)/Caskroom" 2>/dev/null

Step 3: Ask what to run (interactive)

Explain each scope, then ask the user (interactive, multi-select) which to run:

• Remove old versions + stale cache — brew cleanup: deletes superseded versions of installed formulae/casks and cache older than the default retention. Safe; nothing currently installed is removed.
• Uninstall orphaned dependencies — brew autoremove: uninstalls formulae that were pulled in only as dependencies and are no longer required by anything. Review the dry-run list — a formula you use directly but never brew installed explicitly would be removed (re-install with brew install if needed).
• Scrub the entire download cache — brew cleanup --prune=all: also removes the latest cached downloads, not just stale ones. Frees more; the next brew install/upgrade re-downloads.

Step 4: Execute (after approval)

Run the selected actions. If autoremove is selected, run it first, so the freshly-orphaned versions are then swept by the cleanup pass:

brew autoremove

For the cleanup pass, use the full-scrub variant if the user selected it, otherwise the standard one — selecting both the standard cleanup and the full scrub collapses to a single --prune=all run:

brew cleanup              # standard: old versions + stale cache
brew cleanup --prune=all  # full scrub: also removes the latest cached downloads

Step 5: Report

Re-measure the same locations recorded in Step 2 — cache, Cellar, and Caskroom — and report the space reclaimed from the before/after delta, not the cache alone (old-version removal and autoremove free Cellar/Caskroom space with little or no cache impact). Prefer any explicit freed-space figure brew prints. List the formulae uninstalled by autoremove (if run) and what was kept.

Source & license

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

• Author: lexfrei
• Source: lexfrei/ccc
• License: BSD-3-Clause

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