Shipkit Codebase Audit

shipkit-codebase-audit - Dead Code & Wiring Audit

Purpose: Deliver one outcome — this codebase has nothing stale, orphaned, or unwired. Find unused exports, unreachable files, unused dependencies, broken imports, and the contract drift that linters can't see.

What this is: A standing operating procedure. Its value is remembering that dead-code and wiring checks must happen, running them the same way in any repo (even repos with no tooling installed), and reasoning past what the tooling is blind to. Running a linter is a natural capability — this skill is the discipline around it, not the linter itself.

What this is NOT:

• Not an auto-fixer — it reports, it does not delete code (deletion is a deliberate call you make).
• Not a code-quality reviewer — that's /shipkit-review-shipping (12 dimensions on recent changes).
• Not a production-readiness gate — that's /shipkit-preflight.
• Not the framework-internal wiring validator — /shipkit-validate-wiring and /shipkit-wiring-graph validate Shipkit's OWN component graph; this audits your application code.

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When to Invoke

| Invocation | Tier | What runs | |------------|------|-----------| | /shipkit-codebase-audit | quick (default) | Mode A only — ephemeral knip-class run + report. Cheap, CI-suitable. | | /shipkit-codebase-audit deep | standard | Mode A, then a handful of parallel dimension agents reason about blind spots. | | /shipkit-codebase-audit exhaustive | exhaustive | Mode A, then one agent per file (or slice) + contract-ledger reconcile-join. Full coverage. Expensive — opt-in. | | /shipkit-codebase-audit src/ | quick on a scope | Limit the audit to a directory. |

Also triggers on: "audit my codebase", "find dead code", "what's unused here", "check for orphaned modules", "is anything unwired", "deep/exhaustive codebase audit".

Workflow position: any time for quick (it's a hygiene sweep); deep/exhaustive before a milestone, a refactor, or a release.

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Prerequisites

Required: none. The skill is portable — it works in a repo with no dead-code tooling installed and in a repo with no .shipkit/ directory.

Improves results when present:

• .shipkit/codebase-index.json — narrows discovery (index-accelerated).
• .shipkit/engineering-definition.json, .shipkit/architecture.json, .shipkit/specs/active/*.json — the intent source for Mode B (see Portability Caveat).
• A previous .shipkit/codebase-audit.json — enables run-over-run delta tracking.

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The Model: Two Modes, One Outcome

• Mode A — the floor (deterministic). Run knip-class tooling. Catches unused exports / files / dependencies / unresolved imports. Fast, exact, no judgment.
• Mode B — the ceiling (reasoning). Reconcile intent ↔ code: contract drift, half-wired seams, declared-but-unbuilt and built-but-undeclared components. Reasons only about what Mode A could not see — it is always fed Mode A's results so no agent re-discovers a linter finding.

quick = A. deep = A then B (dimension sweep). exhaustive = A then B (per-file fan-out). A always runs first and feeds B.

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Process

Completion Tracking

Create tasks after scoping:

• TaskCreate: "Mode A sweep + parse"
• TaskCreate: "Write codebase-audit.json"
• For deep/exhaustive: TaskCreate: "Mode B reconcile" and "Reconcile-join + gap re-dispatch"
• TaskCreate: "Present summary"

TaskUpdate to in_progress/completed as you go. Do NOT present results until the artifact is written and (for deep/exhaustive) every expected unit has a finding.

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Step 0 — Detect (always)

See references/detection-patterns.md for the full matrices.

1. Package manager + layout: lockfile (package-lock.json → npm, pnpm-lock.yaml → pnpm, yarn.lock → yarn, bun.lockb → bun) and workspaces / pnpm-workspace.yaml for monorepos. This picks the ephemeral runner: npx / pnpm dlx / yarn dlx / bunx.
2. Existing tooling/config (detect-before-anything, never duplicate): knip.json/knip.jsonc/.knip.*, knip in devDependencies, a depcheck/ts-prune/unimported config, or a lint:dead-style script. If a tool is already installed, prefer the installed one (no network needed).
3. Language: if the repo is not JS/TS and no equivalent dead-code tool is available, report cleanly ("no dead-code tooling available for `") and skip to a Mode-B-only audit if deep/exhaustive was requested, or exit cleanly for quick`. Never fabricate findings.

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Step 1 — Mode A sweep (all tiers)

1. Run the knip-class check ephemerally via the detected runner — e.g. npx --yes knip --no-progress (or the installed binary if present). No install, no repo mutation.
2. Parse output into: unusedExports, unusedFiles, unusedDependencies, unresolvedImports, unusedDevDependencies.
3. If the runner fails (offline sandbox, network block), report the failure explicitly — do not silently pass. Suggest the installed-tooling path or the opt-in persistence below.

Mode A mutates nothing in the consumer's source, package.json, or lockfile.

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Step 2 — Persistence (opt-in only)

After the sweep, if no dead-code tooling is wired into the repo, offer (never perform silently):

> "knip isn't wired into this repo. Want me to add it as a devDep + a lint:dead script so this check runs in CI? (I won't touch anything unless you say yes.)"

If accepted, follow install discipline below. v1 persists a devDep + a lint:dead script only (CI-line wiring is a later enhancement). Idempotent: a no-op if already wired.

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Step 3 — Mode B, standard tier (deep only)

Resolve the intent source (see Portability Caveat), build the shared context (dependency graph + exported API surface + Mode A results + intent), then launch parallel dimension agents.

Use the Agent tool with subagent_type: "Explore" (read-only) — one agent per dimension, in a single message:

• Contract drift — exported signatures/types that callers no longer match.
• Half-wired seams — a module imports/wires something that exists but is never invoked, or a feature flag/route declared but not reachable.
• Declared-but-unbuilt — intent (spec/engineering-definition) names a component with no implementation.
• Built-but-undeclared — implemented surface area with no intent backing (candidate dead feature).

Each agent is fed the Mode A results and told to exclude anything already reported. See references/mode-b-dimensions.md.

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Step 4 — Mode B, exhaustive tier (exhaustive only)

The full-coverage tier. See references/mode-b-dimensions.md for the protocol and references/output-schema.md for the contract-ledger shape.

1. Announce the cost: "Exhaustive is the expensive path — one agent per file. Proceeding." (AC: opt-in is explicit.)
2. Build the grounded-context bundle ONCE (dependency graph + API surface + Mode A results + intent) and pass it identically to every worker. No worker re-derives the global picture.
3. Partition the file set: default one agent per file; above ~150 source files, collapse to cohesive slices (by dependency cluster; fall back to directory), each slice small enough that no agent truncates.
4. Dispatch read-only Explore workers (Agent tool, batched to the concurrency cap). Each worker writes to disk:

• internal-integrity findings (intra-file dead code, incoherence), and
• a contract ledger: what the file provides (exports + signatures/types) and what it expects (imports + the signatures/types it relies on).

1. Reconcile-join (this is where drift surfaces — not mere dedup): join every expects against the matching provides across all ledgers. Flag mismatched signatures, expected-but-unprovided, and provided-but-unconsumed. Merge + dedupe integrity findings.
2. Coverage guarantee: count ledger files on disk against the expected unit set. Re-dispatch any missing units until the gap is zero — reconcile against the artifacts, never against an agent's self-report.

Fallback (documented): correctness does not depend on concurrency. If the runtime can't fan out wide (concurrency caps, throttling), workers run batched-sequentially — full coverage is preserved by the reconcile-join + gap re-dispatch loop; only wall-clock changes.

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Step 5 — Write the artifact (always, every tier)

Create .shipkit/codebase-audit.json conforming to references/output-schema.md (Shipkit convention: $schema, type, version, lastUpdated, source, summary, plus findings + deltas).

• Write it on every tier including quick — "ephemeral" is about the tooling, never the output.
• If .shipkit/ does not exist (non-Shipkit repo), create it so the artifact lands. (Writing to .shipkit/ is sanctioned skill-data output, not a consumer-source mutation.)
• If a previous artifact exists, archive it to .shipkit/audits/codebase-audit-[YYYY-MM-DD].json and compute deltas (new / fixed / regressed).

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Step 6 — Present

Codebase audit complete (tier: quick|deep|exhaustive)

Scanned: X files | Package manager: pnpm | Tooling: knip (ephemeral)

Mode A (deterministic):
  Unused exports: X   Unused files: X   Unused deps: X   Unresolved imports: X

Mode B (reasoning) [deep/exhaustive only]:
  Contract drift: X   Half-wired seams: X   Declared-but-unbuilt: X   Built-but-undeclared: X
  Coverage: X/X files reconciled

Delta since last audit: +X new, -X fixed, X regressions

Top findings:
  1. [finding with file:line]
  2. ...

Full report: .shipkit/codebase-audit.json

Want me to wire knip into CI (devDep + lint:dead), or help remove any of these?

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Install Discipline (opt-in persistence only)

The only thing in this skill that ever touches the consumer's source/package.json/lockfile. Governed by:

• Detect before install — never add tooling/config that already exists.
• Respect the package manager (npm/pnpm/yarn/bun) and monorepo layout.
• Respect existing lint config — never clobber.
• Surface and confirm — adding a devDep + lint:dead script is a write the user approves, never silent.
• Idempotent — re-running on an already-wired repo is a no-op.
• Never delete or downgrade existing dependencies.

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Value-Test Honesty

This skill passes the Skill Value Test on persistence Claude lacks, not on capability:

• Running knip is a natural capability — Claude does it well without a skill. That is not the value.
• The value is the procedural memory (remembering the check class must run, the same way, in every repo and across sessions), the install discipline, and Mode B's structured intent↔code reconciliation.

Portability Caveat (Mode B)

Mode A is equally portable everywhere. Mode B's depth scales with the available intent signal:

• In a Shipkit repo, intent comes from .shipkit/ artifacts (engineering-definition components/dataContracts, architecture, active specs) — high signal.
• In a non-Shipkit repo, Mode B falls back to README + entry points + exported API surface — lower signal. State this in the output so the user knows Mode B was running with reduced intent.

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Differs From

| Skill | Focus | |-------|-------| | /shipkit-review-shipping | Code quality on recent changes (12 dimensions) | | /shipkit-preflight | MVP production readiness checklist | | /shipkit-scale-ready | Scale & operations readiness | | /shipkit-prompt-audit | LLM pipeline architecture | | /shipkit-validate-wiring, /shipkit-wiring-graph | Framework-internal — validate Shipkit's own component graph. This skill audits your app code. |

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Context Files This Skill Reads

| File | Purpose | |------|---------| | Source code + package.json / lockfiles | Detection + the audit target | | .shipkit/codebase-index.json | Index-accelerated discovery (if present) | | .shipkit/engineering-definition.json, architecture.json, specs/active/*.json | Mode B intent source (if present) | | Previous .shipkit/codebase-audit.json | Delta tracking (if present) |

Context Files This Skill Writes

Write Strategy: OVERWRITE with ARCHIVE.

• .shipkit/codebase-audit.json — the audit report (every tier; bootstraps .shipkit/ if absent).
• .shipkit/audits/codebase-audit-[YYYY-MM-DD].json — archived previous report.

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Success Criteria

• [ ] Package manager + monorepo layout detected; matching ephemeral runner used
• [ ] Pre-existing tooling detected and reused, never duplicated
• [ ] quick mutates zero consumer source/package.json/lockfile
• [ ] Persistence happens only after explicit confirmation and is idempotent
• [ ] Non-JS/unsupported repo reports cleanly with no fabricated findings
• [ ] deep/exhaustive: Mode A runs first; Mode B excludes Mode A findings
• [ ] Mode B intent source resolved (.shipkit/ primary, code-surface fallback) with caveat stated
• [ ] exhaustive: grounded bundle built once; per-file workers write ledgers to disk
• [ ] exhaustive: reconcile-JOINS ledgers for cross-file drift; gaps re-dispatched until coverage is complete
• [ ] Artifact written on EVERY tier (incl. quick); .shipkit/ bootstrapped if absent
• [ ] Output conforms to the JSON schema; summary counts match findings
• [ ] Report only — no unsolicited deletion or mutation

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After Completion

Audit written to .shipkit/codebase-audit.json. Next steps:

1. Remove confirmed dead code — deletion is a natural capability; ask Claude to remove specific unused exports/files/deps, then re-run /shipkit-codebase-audit to verify the finding is gone.
2. Wire the gate — if knip isn't in the repo, accept the opt-in persistence so the check runs in CI (devDep + lint:dead).
3. Go deeper before a milestone — re-run as /shipkit-codebase-audit deep (or exhaustive) to catch contract drift and unwired seams the linter can't see.
4. Hand to a release gate — feed the results into /shipkit-preflight (production readiness) or /shipkit-review-shipping (change-level quality) as part of pre-ship checks.

No follow-up skill is triggered automatically — the user decides what to remove.

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References

• references/detection-patterns.md — package-manager, tooling, and runner detection matrices; non-JS behaviour
• references/output-schema.md — .shipkit/codebase-audit.json schema + the contract-ledger shape
• references/mode-b-dimensions.md — Mode B dimensions (standard) and the per-file fan-out + reconcile-join protocol (exhaustive)

Source & license

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

• Author: stefan-stepzero
• Source: stefan-stepzero/shipkit
• License: MIT

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