safe-cleanup

Safe Cleanup

Delete, move, overwrite, truncate, kill, drop or reset without losing anything the user needs, and keep test runs from writing into real user data. Look at the target first, act on an exact list, keep a way back.

When to Use

• Deleting or moving files, freeing disk space, pruning branches, containers, images or volumes
• Overwriting a file, config or database; git reset --hard, git checkout -- ., git clean, force-push
• Killing processes or restarting services
• A scripted run of a game, app, migration or sync tool that may autosave, migrate or overwrite saves, configs or databases
• Don't use for: scratch files you created this session that nothing else uses

Procedure

1. Confirm the exact set. If the request is ambiguous ("clean up the old stuff", "remove the test accounts", a name that may be a typo), list the exact items you would touch and confirm them with clarify first. Never widen the scope of a destructive request from an ambiguous reading; take the narrow reading.
2. Look at each target. Inspect it before you touch it: terminal("ls -la <path>"), du -sh <path>, read_file for a file; git status, git stash list and git log @{u}.. for unpushed work in a repo; SELECT count(*) for a table. Done when you have a written list of targets with size and contents.
3. Prefer moving to an archive over rm. Move targets into archive/<YYYY-MM-DD>/ and write MANIFEST.txt there: original path, size, sha256, reason.
4. Delete an original only after the backup is proven to contain it. Per file: list it in the archive or backup (tar -tvf, unzip -l, the backup tool's listing) and compare size or hash (sha256sum; shasum -a 256 on macOS) against the original. Then delete that one file.
5. Delete per file, never by wildcard. Build the explicit list, read it, delete from it item by item. No rm -rf dir/*. Before find ... -delete, run the same find with -print and read the output. Quote paths and guard variables: rm -- "${dir:?}/name".
6. Kill by PID, not by pattern. pgrep -f/pkill -f <pattern> also match the shell running your own loop or command. Kill by the PID file the process wrote, or find it with pgrep -x <exact-name>, confirm the cmdline with ps -o pid,args -p <pid>, then kill <pid>. Send TERM, wait, check, and send KILL only if it is still running.
7. Protect user state around test runs. Before a run that may write saves, configs or databases, copy them aside: cp -a <dir> <dir>.bak-<timestamp>; for SQLite sqlite3 <db> ".backup <db>.bak"; for Postgres pg_dump. After the run, restore and confirm with diff -r or hashes. Better: point the program at a scratch profile or data dir (flag or env var) so the real state is never opened.
8. Report what was removed, moved or killed, where the archive or backup is, and what you left because you could not confirm it.