Preen Knip

Proactively reduce knip findings by removing unused dependencies, exports, and files in coherent, low-risk slices.

When to Run

Run this skill when maintaining code quality or during slack time, especially when the codebase has accumulated knip noise.

Discovery Phase

Capture a baseline of current findings:

pnpm exec knip --config knip.json --use-tsconfig-files --reporter compact || true

For machine-readable scoring/counting:

KNIP_JSON=$(mktemp)
pnpm exec knip --config knip.json --use-tsconfig-files --reporter json > "$KNIP_JSON" 2>/dev/null || true
jq '[
  .issues[]? |
  (.dependencies // []),
  (.devDependencies // []),
  (.unlisted // []),
  (.unresolved // []),
  (.exports // []),
  (.types // [])
] | flatten | length' "$KNIP_JSON"
rm -f "$KNIP_JSON"

Slice Selection

Choose one coherent slice per run. Prefer macro slices over micro edits:

One package/domain group at a time (for example packages/ui + packages/app-wallet)
Low behavior risk changes first:
- remove clearly unused exports or dead files
- remove clearly unused dependencies after usage verification
Avoid mixed concerns (do not combine unrelated refactors)

Change Rules

Verify each candidate before deleting/removing (search for usage with rg)
Preserve public API ergonomics when needed (for example exported props/types for public components)
Do not add any, unsafe casts, or @ts-ignore
Keep changes behavior-preserving and test-backed

Validation

Run at least impacted checks for touched packages:

pnpm exec tsx scripts/ciImpact/runImpactedQuality.ts >/dev/null
pnpm exec tsx scripts/ciImpact/runImpactedTests.ts >/dev/null

If a package has direct build/test scripts, run those too for faster local confidence.

Re-measure knip findings after edits using the same baseline command.

Quality Gate

Only proceed when measured knip findings decrease for the selected slice:

# baseline_count captured before edits
# after_count captured after edits
[ "$after_count" -lt "$baseline_count" ]

Deliverable

One focused PR per slice
Clear summary of removed findings
Enter merge queue and monitor to merge before starting the next slice

preen-knip