git-branch-cleanup

git-branch-cleanup is a skill for Claude Code from ivy00johns/Skill-Madness. It costs 168 tokens per session (1,372 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided tool for finding local and remote Git branches that are merged, stale, or no longer connected to a remote repository.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prune deleted remote references, identify merged branches, find orphaned branches, and review a cleanup summary.
Why use it?
Old branches and tracking references make repositories harder to navigate and can hide which branches are still needed. It checks the current remote state and shows what is safe to remove before acting.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the skill-madness plugin — 80 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to prune deleted remote references, identify merged branches, find orphaned branches, and review a cleanup summary.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ivy00johns/skill-madness/git-branch-cleanup
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add ivy00johns/Skill-Madness --skill git-branch-cleanup
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ivy00johns/Skill-Madness

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skill-madness, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 80 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for git-branch-cleanup

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ivy00johns/skill-madness/git-branch-cleanup/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ivy00johns/skill-madness/git-branch-cleanup)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ivy00johns/skill-madness/git-branch-cleanup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ivy00johns/skill-madness/git-branch-cleanup/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for git-branch-cleanup

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ivy00johns/skill-madness/git-branch-cleanup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ivy00johns/skill-madness/git-branch-cleanup.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 168 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,372 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00168 $0.01372
Opus 5 $0.00084 $0.00686
Sonnet 5 $0.00034 $0.00274
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.00137

Measured 9d ago against content hash a18174b42e86, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

git-branch-cleanup scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/archive/git-branch-cleanup/SKILL.md · 167 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 167 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Git Branch Cleanup

Systematically identify and remove branches that are no longer needed. Stale branches accumulate fast — especially when PRs auto-delete the remote branch on merge but the local tracking ref and local branch stick around. This skill walks through the cleanup safely so nothing important gets lost.

Workflow

Step 1: Refresh remote state

Start by fetching and pruning so the local view of remote branches is accurate. Without this, you'd see stale origin/* refs for branches GitHub already deleted on merge.

git fetch origin --prune

Step 2: Detect the default branch

Don't assume main — check:

git symbolic-ref -q --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed 's@^origin/@@'

The -q flag suppresses the fatal error when origin/HEAD isn't set, and --short strips the refs/remotes/ prefix. If that fails, fall back to checking whether main or master exists locally. Use the result as $DEFAULT for the rest of the workflow.

Step 3: Categorize every branch

Run these four commands and cross-reference the results:

Command Purpose
git branch -vv Local branches with tracking status and ahead/behind
git branch --merged origin/$DEFAULT Local branches fully merged into the default branch
git branch -r --merged origin/$DEFAULT Remote branches fully merged
git branch -r --no-merged origin/$DEFAULT Remote branches with unmerged work (context only)

From these results, build four categories:

  1. Merged local branches — appear in --merged output, excluding the default branch itself. These are safe to delete.
  2. Stale remote branches — appear in -r --merged output, excluding origin/HEAD and origin/$DEFAULT. These are safe to delete from the remote.
  3. Orphaned local branchesgit branch -vv shows their tracking remote as gone but they are NOT in the --merged list. These contain unmerged work and need the user's attention.
  4. Active unmerged branches — everything else. Leave these alone.

Read the full file on GitHub · 167 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 167 lines · 168 tokens per session scan A a18174b42e86

Subscribe to this mod's changes

git-branch-cleanup is a skill published in the GitHub repository ivy00johns/Skill-Madness (11 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 168 tokens to every session and 1,372 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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