dependency-pruning

A repository audit that examines listed software dependencies and classifies them as removable, optimisable, replaceable, needing migration, or worth keeping. Dependencies are external packages that the project relies on.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect Python, JavaScript or TypeScript, Go, Rust, and other project manifests, find unused or underused packages, and identify candidates for removal, vendoring, rewriting, or migration.
Why use it?
Unused, outdated, or inefficient dependencies increase maintenance and supply-chain risk. The audit shows why each dependency belongs in a category before any safe changes are offered.

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/mitodl/agent-kit/dependency-pruning
Any agent
npx skills add mitodl/agent-kit --skill dependency-pruning
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mitodl/agent-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 176 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,407 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 $0.00176 $0.03407
Opus 5 $0.00088 $0.01703
Sonnet 5 $0.00035 $0.00681
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00341

Measured yesterday against content hash 066406304da1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dependency-pruning 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 yesterday.

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/process/dependency-pruning/SKILL.md · 335 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 335 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Dependency Pruning

Goal

Produce an actionable report categorizing dependencies into: remove, optimize import style, vendor/rewrite, migrate away from, and keep. Then offer to execute the safe changes.

Configurable thresholds (defaults)

  • Max imported symbols for vendor candidate: 3 unique symbols from the package
  • Max package LOC proxy for vendor candidate: 500 total source lines

Mention these defaults briefly at the start and ask if the user wants to override them — but don't block; proceed with defaults if they don't respond.


Phase 1 — Detect ecosystems

Scan the repo root and subdirectories for manifest files:

Ecosystem Indicator files
Python pyproject.toml, requirements*.txt, setup.py, setup.cfg, Pipfile
JS/TS package.json
Go go.mod
Rust Cargo.toml

For other ecosystems, look for any manifest that lists dependencies (Gemfile, pom.xml, build.gradle, pubspec.yaml, mix.exs, etc.) and adapt the approach below to that format.

Announce which ecosystems were found before proceeding. In monorepos, enumerate all manifest files.


Phase 2 — Find unused dependencies

See references/unused-detection.md for the full per-ecosystem commands.

Python — run uvx deptry . (no install needed). Focus on DEP001 (declared but never imported). If deptry is unavailable, fall back to grepping for each dependency name across *.py files.

JS/TS — run npx --yes depcheck --json. Unused runtime deps appear under dependencies, unused dev deps under devDependencies. knip is a good alternative for monorepos: npx --yes knip --reporter json.

Go — run go mod tidy -v in a temporary copy of go.mod/go.sum; diff the result to see what disappears. Do not mutate the real files yet.

Rust — run cargo machete (installs itself if needed via cargo install cargo-machete --quiet).

Other — enumerate declared deps from the manifest, then grep the source tree for each package name to find those never referenced.

Read the full file on GitHub · 335 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files 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. yesterday First seen · 335 lines · 176 tokens per session scan A 066406304da1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dependency-pruning is a skill published in the GitHub repository mitodl/agent-kit (2 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed BSD-3-Clause. It adds 176 tokens to every session and 3,407 once invoked, about $0.0009 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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