knip

A tool guide for Knip, which scans JavaScript and TypeScript projects for code and dependencies that nothing uses. It can find unused files, exports, types, and packages.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before a refactor or pull request to find dead code and unused dependencies, review the findings, remove them in small changes, and check again.
Why use it?
It helps identify code that adds maintenance work without being part of the running project. This makes cleanup and refactoring more focused.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/lftpadilla/agent-dev-kit/knip
Any agent
npx skills add LFTPadilla/agent-dev-kit --skill knip
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/LFTPadilla/agent-dev-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 59 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 448 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00059 $0.00448
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00224
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00090
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00045

Measured 2d ago against content hash 79e778122ca8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

knip 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 2d 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.

plugins/dev-skills/skills/knip/SKILL.md · 40 lines

What it actually says

knip — dead code & unused dependency finder

Knip traces the whole project (not one file at a time) to find what nothing references: unused files, exports, types, and dependencies. This is the mechanical version of "delete code you don't need."

Run

npx knip                  # report unused files, exports, deps, types
npx knip --production     # only production code paths (ignore tests/dev)
npx knip --dependencies   # just unused/unlisted dependencies
npx knip --fix            # auto-remove unused exports/files (review the diff!)

Zero-config for most setups — knip reads package.json + tsconfig.json and has built-in plugins for Vite, Vitest, Next, ESLint, etc. Add a knip.json only if entry points are non-standard.

How to use the output

  1. Run npx knip. Group findings: unused files / exports / deps / types.
  2. Verify before deleting — knip can flag things reached only by dynamic import, config strings, or framework conventions. Confirm each is truly dead.
  3. Remove in small commits (files, then exports, then deps). Re-run knip after.
  4. --fix is safe for clearly-unused exports/files, but read the diff — never blind-apply on auth, migration, or public-API code.

Gotchas

  • Monorepo: run per-workspace or configure workspaces in knip.json.
  • Entry points it can't infer (CLI bins, serverless handlers) → list them in knip.json so it doesn't report them as unused.
  • Pairs well as a pre-commit gate (warn, don't block) and before any refactor.
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. 2d ago First seen · 40 lines · 59 tokens per session scan A 79e778122ca8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

knip is a skill published in the GitHub repository LFTPadilla/agent-dev-kit (2 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 59 tokens to every session and 448 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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