This week's tip of the week is Kondo.
Do you have a folder full of old coding projects that you swear you’re going to come back to? Same. The problem is that those projects are usually dragging around a bunch of stuff you do not need anymore: dependencies, build artifacts, caches, compiled output, etc.
Kondo helps clean that up. This is not just “delete node_modules again.” à la rimraf or rm -rf. Kondo supports 20+ project types across different stacks, which makes it a nice cleanup tool for anyone with a messy ~/code, ~/dev, or ~/projects folder.
It scans your projects and finds dependency and build artifact folders that can usually be regenerated later. Think node_modules, Rust target, build folders, Composer vendor, CMake artifacts, and a bunch more.
Install it with Homebrew:
brew install kondoOr with Cargo (you’ll need rust installed):
cargo install kondoThen point it at a folder:
kondo ~/codeKondo will scan your projects and prompt you before deleting anything. This is basically rm -rf with a nicer workflow and prompts. That is useful, but it also means you should review what it wants to delete before smashing yes like you’re accepting cookie banners.
A good first run is somewhere scoped:
❯ kondo ./mcterm
/Users/nicktaylor/dev/oss/mcterm/McTermCore Swift project (3 months ago)
└─ .build (804.2MiB)
└─ .swiftpm (345.0B)
delete above artifact directories? ([y]es, [n]o, [a]ll, [q]uit): y
Projects cleaned: 1/1, Bytes deleted: 804.2MiB / 804.2MiB
If you have a pile of cloned repos, abandoned experiments, or conference demo apps sitting around, this is an easy way to claw back space without manually spelunking through every folder.
I’ve written about Mole before, which is also in the disk cleanup world (macOS only), but Kondo is more focused on cleaning dependency and build artifacts from code projects specifically, so it earns its own spot.
That's it! Short and sweet. Until the next one!
