cleanup

Overview

Repository hygiene tool that finds stale branches, lingering PRs, merged branches not yet deleted, and orphaned worktrees. Presents everything in a table, asks for confirmation per item, and cleans up what you approve.

When to use

• When the repository has accumulated many old branches.
• When you want to prune merged branches that were never deleted after merge.
• When open PRs have gone stale and need to be closed or re-evaluated.
• When worktrees from previous tasks were left behind.
• Before a release to reduce clutter.

When NOT to use

• For refactoring or cleaning up code. Use /review or a manual refactor instead.
• For dependency updates or vulnerability scanning. Use /audit instead.
• For git commit, push, or PR creation. Use /ship instead.

Arguments

This skill accepts optional arguments after /cleanup:

• No arguments: full scan covering branches, PRs, and worktrees. Default mode is dry-run. No mutation happens without --apply.
• branches: scan branches only.
• prs: scan PRs only.
• worktrees: scan worktrees only.
• --dry-run: explicit dry-run flag. Same as the default. Kept for clarity.
• --apply: perform the cleanup. Required for any mutation. Without this flag, the skill prints the report and exits.

Examples: /cleanup branches, dry-run, /cleanup prs --apply, /cleanup --apply.

The two-phase flow exists because cleanup is destructive: read the report, decide, then re-run with --apply.

Steps

1. Detect the platform and account. Read git remote get-url origin to determine GitHub or GitLab. Identify the correct account token per the github-accounts or gitlab-accounts rules.
2. Find merged branches. Run git branch --merged origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null to list local branches whose HEAD is reachable from the default branch. If origin/HEAD is not set, try origin/main, then origin/master. Exclude protected branches: main, master, develop, staging, production, and any branch matching release/*. These can be safely deleted with git branch -d.
3. Find stale branches. For each local and remote branch not in the merged list and not protected, check the date of the last commit: git log -1 --format="%ci" <branch>. Flag branches with no commits in the last 30 days as stale. Record the branch name, last commit date, last commit message, and author.
4. Find stale PRs. Query the platform for open PRs in the current repo.
   • GitHub: GH_TOKEN=$(gh auth token --user <account>) gh pr list --state open --json number,title,author,createdAt,updatedAt,isDraft,url
   • GitLab: GITLAB_TOKEN=<token> GITLAB_HOST=<host> glab mr list -F json, which lists open MRs by default
   • Flag PRs open for more than 14 days with no activity in the last 7 days as stale.
   • Flag draft PRs open for more than 7 days separately.
5. Find orphaned worktrees. Run git worktree list --porcelain. For each worktree, check if its branch still exists and is not merged. A worktree whose branch was deleted or merged is orphaned.

6. Present findings. Display a table grouped by category:

   ## Cleanup Report
   
   ### Merged branches (safe to delete)
   
   | Branch | Merged into | Last commit |
   |--------|------------|-------------|
   | feature/auth-v2 | main | 12 days ago |
   | bugfix/null-check | main | 3 weeks ago |
   
   ### Stale branches (no commits in 30+ days)
   
   | Branch | Last commit | Author | Last message |
   |--------|------------|--------|-------------|
   | feature/old-idea | 45 days ago | alice | WIP: initial attempt |
   
   ### Stale PRs (open 14+ days, no recent activity)
   
   | PR | Title | Author | Age | Last activity |
   |----|-------|--------|-----|--------------|
   | #42 | Add caching layer | bob | 21 days | 18 days ago |
   
   ### Draft PRs (open 7+ days)
   
   | PR | Title | Author | Age |
   |----|-------|--------|-----|
   | #55 | WIP: new layout | carol | 10 days |
   
   ### Orphaned worktrees
   
   | Path | Branch | Reason |
   |------|--------|--------|
   | /tmp/repo-auth | feature/auth | branch deleted |

7. If --apply was NOT passed, stop here. Default mode is dry-run. Print the report, remind the user to re-run with --apply to mutate, and exit.

8. Confirm and act. Only when --apply was passed. For each category, ask the user which items to clean up. Accept "all", a comma-separated list of names or numbers, or "skip".

   • Merged branches: git branch -d <branch>.
   • Stale branches: git branch -D <branch> with a warning that this force-deletes an unmerged branch.
   • Stale PRs: close without a comment, per ../../rules/pr-comment-discipline.md. The terminal report names each closed PR and its idle time, so the user can tell the author directly.
     • GitHub: GH_TOKEN=$(gh auth token --user <account>) gh pr close <number>
     • GitLab: GITLAB_TOKEN=<token> GITLAB_HOST=<host> glab mr close <number>
   • Draft PRs: same as stale PRs.
   • Orphaned worktrees: git worktree remove <path>.
9. Prune remote tracking branches. Run git remote prune origin to clean up references to deleted remote branches.

10. Print summary.

    ### Cleanup complete
    
    - N merged branches deleted
    - N stale branches deleted
    - N PRs closed
    - N worktrees removed
    - Remote tracking branches pruned

Rules

• Never delete protected branches: main, master, develop, staging, production, or branches matching release/*.
• Always confirm before force-deleting unmerged branches. Make the warning visible.
• Never close PRs that have activity in the last 7 days, even if they are older than the stale threshold.
• Always prefix gh commands with GH_TOKEN per the github-accounts rule.
• Always prefix glab commands with GITLAB_TOKEN and GITLAB_HOST per the gitlab-accounts rule.
• Close a PR with no comment. The reason goes in the terminal report, where the user decides how to tell the author.
• In --dry-run mode, do not modify any state. Report only.
• When a branch exists both locally and on the remote, delete both if approved. Delete local first with git branch -d <branch>, or -D after the force-delete warning, then remote with git push origin --delete <branch>.
• Show age and last activity in relative format.

Common Rationalizations

• "The user asked for cleanup, so --apply is implied": the default is a dry run. Print the report and wait for a re-run with --apply.
• "The branch is stale, so -D is fine": a stale branch can hold the only copy of unmerged work. Show the force-delete warning and get a per-item answer.
• "origin/HEAD is missing, so skip the merged scan": fall back to origin/main, then origin/master.
• "The PR is 20 days old, close it": age alone is not staleness. Activity in the last 7 days keeps it open.
• "The default token works for gh": the wrong account sees the wrong PRs or none. Prefix GH_TOKEN for the account read from the remote.

Red Flags

• Stop and drop the item when a candidate branch is main, master, develop, staging, production, or matches release/*.
• Stop after the report when the invocation lacks --apply.
• Stop and ask again when the user's selection names an item absent from the report.
• Stop and keep the worktree when git worktree list --porcelain shows uncommitted changes in it.

Verification

• The report lists every category the invocation scanned, with relative ages.
• In dry-run mode, git branch -a, git worktree list, and the open PR list are unchanged after the run.
• With --apply, each approved branch is absent from git branch -a and each approved worktree from git worktree list.
• Each closed PR shows the state CLOSED in GH_TOKEN=$(gh auth token --user <account>) gh pr view <number> --json state, or glab mr view on GitLab.
• The summary counts match the items the user approved.

Related skills

• /ship - Commit, push, and create PRs.
• /morning - Cross-account sweep of open PRs, reviews, and issues. This skill covers one repository; that one covers every account.