System cleanup

Audit the disk, clear what is safely regenerable, and confirm before touching anything else.

Ground rules

• Measure physical free space on the macOS Data volume with df -h /System/Volumes/Data; plain df /, du, Finder categories, and cleaner estimates are supporting evidence rather than the result.
• Prefer a tool's current native cleanup command over deleting its directories. Confirm the installed interface with its own help/current documentation and use a dry run when available; do not preserve a package-manager command catalogue here.
• For direct deletion, use trash when available. Accumulate items in Trash and ask once before emptying it. If trash is unavailable, obtain confirmation before permanent deletion.
• A general cleanup request supplies standing authority for exact, inactive, regenerable build artifacts and package/language caches within the requested cleanup boundary; reuse it without asking per item.
• Do not clear GUI application data automatically. Report application cache/support-directory sizes unless the user names the app and accepts the risk to logins, cookies, history, or local state.
• Ask before removing personal files, media, applications, projects, backups, model weights, Docker volumes, virtual machines, emulator snapshots, SDKs, runtimes, or toolchains.
• Never bypass SIP, weaken permissions, kill unrelated processes, or delete protected system paths to satisfy a cleanup estimate.

Workflow

1. Assess

Measure the Data volume and inspect mounted volumes. Record initial free space and any external drive. Inspect APFS volumes/snapshots only when their accounting can materially explain the result.