Launching smartclean: A CLI to Clean Up Your Dev Machine

Developer machines fill up quietly. node_modules, build caches, package manager stores, old tool data, and forgotten Docker layers add up to tens of gigabytes. smartclean is a small CLI that finds that cruft and removes it safely.

What it does

• Scans common locations for reclaimable space: node_modules, .cache, build output, package manager caches.
• Shows what it found with sizes before touching anything.
• Requires confirmation; supports --dry-run to preview.
• Never deletes a directory that is not safely reproducible; it skips anything it cannot verify.

Install

$ # install via bun (example)
bun add -g smartclean
$ # or download a binary from releases

Usage

smartclean scan
smartclean clean --dry-run
smartclean clean

The scan output groups by category so you can see where the space went. Most machines recover 5-20 GB on the first run.

Safety first

The default is conservative. smartclean will not remove a directory unless it can confirm it is regenerable (lockfile present, cache directory, known build output). If you are unsure, --dry-run shows exactly what would be deleted.

Why I built it

I kept running out of disk on a laptop with a 256 GB SSD. Existing tools either required a GUI or deleted too aggressively. smartclean is the middle ground: fast, terminal-native, and safe.

Links

• Repo: farishan/smartclean
• Releases: releases

Feedback welcome. If it deletes something it should not have, open an issue with the path and I will add a guard.

What I learned shipping it

The hardest part was not the scanning; it was deciding what counts as safe. A directory with a lockfile next to it is safe. A directory without one is not, even if it looks like a cache. When in doubt, smartclean skips and tells you why.

The first version is intentionally small: scan, preview, clean. Future releases will add per-directory allowlists and a JSON output mode for scripting.