prune

prune is a skill for Claude Code from nicograef/handbook. It costs 85 tokens per session (1,107 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A cleanup tool for stored coding-agent state, such as old transcripts, session caches, scratchpads, memories, and outdated repository leftovers.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to remove old state by age and review suggestions for retiring obsolete memories, rules, or project files.
Why use it?
It reduces stale information that can confuse future agent sessions and lets you preview proposed cleanup before applying semantic changes.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the handbook plugin — 23 skills, 1 agent, 1 hook shipped together

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/nicograef/handbook/prune
Any agent
npx skills add nicograef/handbook --skill prune
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicograef/handbook

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install handbook, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 23 skills, 1 agent, 1 hook.

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 prune

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicograef/handbook/prune.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicograef/handbook/prune)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nicograef/handbook/prune"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nicograef/handbook/prune.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 85 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,107 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 5.1 $0.00085 $0.01107
Opus 5 $0.00043 $0.00553
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00221
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00111

Measured yesterday against content hash 7a42ae0b74cf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prune 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (prune-state.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

.claude/skills/prune/SKILL.md · 116 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 116 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Prune

Retire agent state in two layers.

  • Mechanical — for a user-invoked /prune, deletes aged session state without asking, by explicit design. dry-run is the escape hatch.
  • Semantic — proposes judgment-based deletions behind a multi-select gate.

Workflow

1. Parse arguments

Argument: $ARGUMENTS — the parts combine freely:

Argument Meaning
(none) current project, 7-day threshold, delete
all every project slug plus the global session-state classes
<N>d (e.g. 30d) age-threshold override in days (minimum 1)
dry-run preview only, both layers: mechanical report without deleting, semantic findings without the apply step

2. Resolve context

  • Live session id$CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID from the session environment.
  • If unset — proceed without it.

3. Mechanical sweep (ungated)

Run the bundled script via the skill's base directory with an explicit interpreter. Flags are in its own usage line (prune-state.sh, top of file).

  • Never use an absolute handbook path.
  • Never rely on the execute bit — the plugin cache may not preserve it.
  • Pass --delete unless dry-run was given — do not ask first, for a user-invoked /prune.
  • The mechanical classes are age-rule-decidable by design.
  • What the script may touch, and everything it never touches, is in state-map.md.
  • If the machine's layout stops matching the state map, stop and re-verify per its drift rule before trusting the sweep.
  • Never bypass the script with ad-hoc rm on harness state.

4. Semantic review — collect findings

Review the three classes per criteria.md. Every finding carries class, target, cited evidence, and proposed action: delete or update.

5. Gate — multi-select

  • Present all findings in one multi-select.
  • Tool — a structured question tool if the surface has one.
  • Fallback — the formatted options in ../clarify/question-rules.md.
  • Each option shows class, target, evidence, and proposed action.
  • Overflow — batch across rounds grouped by class when findings exceed the tool's capacity.
  • Zero picks — selecting nothing stays a valid outcome in every round.

Read the full file on GitHub · 116 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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 Changed · -13 lines 7a42ae0b74cf
  2. 5d ago First seen · 129 lines · 85 tokens per session scan A fccef312b32b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prune is a skill published in the GitHub repository nicograef/handbook (2 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 85 tokens to every session and 1,107 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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