Evidence-Driven Codebase Pruning

Reduce maintenance surface only after proving what is live, what is obsolete, and which consumers or lifecycle obligations still matter. An analyzer result is a candidate, not permission to delete.

Preserve scope and authority

• Read applicable repository instructions and record the initial Git state. Preserve unrelated staged, unstaged, and untracked work.
• Treat a review, inventory, or "find dead code" request as read-only.
• For a broad cleanup request, report stable candidate IDs and wait for the user to approve specific IDs or batches before editing.
• A precise removal or edit request that names symbols, files, paths, flags, or retirement work authorizes only those targets. A review remains read-only even when it names exact targets. Re-verify every authorized target immediately before changing it.
• Previously approved candidate IDs remain usable only against the same repository state and evidence boundary. Reclassify a candidate when relevant code, configuration, consumers, or lifecycle state changed.
• Do not install analyzers, packages, runtimes, workloads, or tools. Use repository-native tools only when they are already configured and can run without deployments or external mutations.
• Do not remove dependencies or edit manifests or lockfiles under this skill. Route dependency removal through $audit-dependencies when available.
• Do not query or mutate external feature-flag systems or other remote control planes automatically. Read-only access requires explicit authorization for the exact service, destination, and data; mutation remains a separate authorized operation. Do not mutate production data, databases, deployments, remote APIs, or compatibility commitments. Executing a migration or operational retirement requires separate explicit authorization.
• Keep private source and diagnostics local by default. Redact secrets, customer data, internal endpoints, and sensitive runtime evidence from reports.

Keep the capability boundary clear

This skill owns evidence and retirement for repository surface whose absence is intended: unused symbols or files, unreachable handlers, obsolete routes, retired flags or experiments, expired shims, unsupported compatibility paths, completed migration paths, and equivalent maintenance surface.