aiclean

Reclaim disk space from 50+ AI & development tools in one command.

Every AI tool you install silently hoards gigabytes of caches, models, and temp files. aiclean finds them all — and lets you take back your storage.

npm install -g aiclean
aiclean scan

Why aiclean?

The average developer has 20-80 GB of hidden cache files. npm alone caches 2-5 GB. Hugging Face models can hit 50+ GB. Gradle hoards 20+ GB of dependencies. Nobody cleans these. Nobody even knows where they are.

aiclean scans 51 tools across 8 categories, rates every cleanup by risk, and lets you reclaim your disk safely.

Quick Start

# Install globally
npm install -g aiclean

# See what's eating your disk
aiclean scan

# Clean with confirmation prompts
aiclean clean

# Preview without deleting anything
aiclean clean --dry

# Interactive mode — pick what to clean
aiclean interactive

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | aiclean scan | Scan disk usage across all tools | | aiclean clean | Clean with tiered confirmation (low/med/high risk) | | aiclean clean --dry | Preview what would be deleted | | aiclean clean --older-than 30d | Only clean files older than 30 days (Pro) | | aiclean interactive | Choose categories and tools step by step | | aiclean list | List all 51 supported tools | | aiclean auto --weekly | Schedule auto-clean via cron (Pro) | | aiclean auto --status | Check if auto-clean is active | | aiclean auto --off | Disable auto-clean | | aiclean restore --list/--last/--id | List or roll back snapshots (Pro) | | aiclean guard --install/--status/--orphans | Pre-flight disk guardian for AI downloads (Pro, orphans is free) | | aiclean dedupe [--hardlink] | Find duplicate ML model weights across tools (Pro) | | aiclean projects [--dormant 90d] | Clean node_modules, target/, .venv from dormant git repos (Pro) | | aiclean rules --add/--list/--test | Smart rules engine: condition-based cleaning (Pro) | | aiclean daemon install | Install background daemon for rule evaluation (Pro) | | aiclean registry refresh/status | Fetch the live signed adapter registry (Pro) | | aiclean agent enroll | Enroll this machine with the fleet dashboard (Pro/Team) | | aiclean benchmark | Compare your disk usage against aggregated dev stats (Pro) | | aiclean config | View/update configuration | | aiclean logs | View cleaning history | | aiclean stats | View usage statistics | | aiclean plan | Show current account & plan status | | aiclean login | Authenticate with API key | | aiclean logout | Remove credentials | | aiclean unlock | Force-release a stale clean lock |

Filtering

aiclean scan --only claude,cursor       # Scan specific tools
aiclean scan --exclude docker,ollama    # Skip specific tools
aiclean scan --category "AI Tools"      # One category only
aiclean scan --json                     # JSON output for scripts
aiclean clean --risk low                # Only clean low-risk items

Supported Tools (51)

AI Tools

Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf (Codeium), Aider, Continue.dev, Cody (Sourcegraph), Tabnine, Amazon Q

Editors & IDEs

VS Code, JetBrains (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm, GoLand, CLion, DataGrip, Rider, RubyMine, PhpStorm, RustRover, Aqua), Zed, Xcode, Android Studio, Sublime Text

Package Managers

npm, Yarn, pnpm, pip, Conda, Poetry, Pipenv, Homebrew, CocoaPods, Ruby Gems

Languages

Cargo (Rust), Go, Gradle, Maven, Python/Ruff

Build Tools

Docker, Turborepo, Watchman, Metro Bundler

Cloud & DevOps

AWS CLI, Google Cloud CLI, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Vagrant

ML Frameworks

Hugging Face, PyTorch, TensorFlow/Keras, Ollama, LM Studio

System

System Temp, Trash, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, System Logs

Safety

aiclean is built safety-first:

• Risk levels — every tool rated LOW / MED / HIGH with explanation
• Tiered confirmation — low-risk: batch confirm. Medium: grouped warning. High: individual per-tool approval
• Dry run — preview everything before deleting
• Process detection — warns if a tool is currently running
• Lockfile — prevents concurrent clean operations
• Size warnings — extra confirmation for large deletions (5 GB+)
• Never touches — config files, credentials, source code, or user data
• Auto-clean safety — only low-risk by default; high-risk never auto-cleaned

Configuration

Stored at ~/.aicleanrc:

{
  "autoClean": false,
  "interval": "weekly",
  "ignoredTools": [],
  "dryRunByDefault": false,
  "logCleaning": true,
  "telemetry": true,
  "confirmBeforeClean": true,
  "showInsights": true
}

Free vs Pro

The CLI is free and open source. All scan, clean, interactive, and safety features — plus orphaned-download detection — work without an account.

Pro adds:

• Rollback / snapshots — create a restore point before any clean (APFS / btrfs / ZFS), roll back with one command
• Pre-flight disk guardian — intercept ollama pull, huggingface-cli download, docker pull, pip install, npm install etc. when disk is tight; auto-offer cleanup
• Duplicate model detection — find duplicate ML weights across Ollama / HuggingFace / LM Studio / torch.hub and hardlink them to reclaim disk
• Project-aware cleaning — reclaim node_modules, target/, .venv from dormant git repos across your filesystem
• Smart rules engine — condition-based automation (disk %, idle time, project activity, battery, time of day)
• Live signed adapter registry — daily-updated tool definitions with bloat advisories ("Cursor 0.41 moved cache", "Ollama 0.5.x leaks partial downloads — now cleaned")
• Fleet dashboard + benchmarks — compare your usage against anonymized aggregates; team tier gives CTOs org-wide visibility
• Scheduled auto-clean + age-based filtering — cron-style scheduling, --older-than 30d
• Priority support, early access to new features

Learn more at aiclean.tech

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Here's how to get started:

Setting up the dev environment

git clone https://github.com/Prashant-123/aiclean.git
cd aiclean
npm install

Running locally

# Run any command directly
node bin/index.js scan
node bin/index.js clean --dry

# Or link globally for testing
npm link
aiclean scan

Adding a new tool

1. Find the cache paths for the tool on macOS and Linux
2. Add a definition to the appropriate file in adapters/definitions/
3. Each definition needs: id, name, category, risk, riskReason, processNames, description, paths
4. Test with node bin/index.js scan --only your-tool-id

Example definition:

{
  id: 'mytool',
  name: 'My Tool',
  category: 'AI Tools',
  risk: 'low',
  riskReason: 'Pure cache — rebuilt automatically',
  processNames: ['mytool'],
  description: 'My Tool caches and logs',
  paths: {
    darwin: [
      { name: 'cache', path: '~/.cache/mytool' },
    ],
    linux: [
      { name: 'cache', path: '~/.cache/mytool' },
    ],
  },
}

Guidelines

• Test on your own machine before submitting — run scan and clean --dry to verify paths exist and sizes are correct
• Verify paths are safe — only cache/temp/log directories, never config or user data
• Set the right risk level — low for pure caches, medium for package caches that slow rebuilds, high for large downloads (models, VMs) that take a long time to re-acquire
• Add process names — so we can warn users if the tool is running during clean
• No overlapping paths — if a parent directory is listed, don't also list its children

Submitting changes

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b add-mytool-support
3. Make your changes
4. Test: node bin/index.js scan and node bin/index.js clean --dry
5. Submit a pull request with a description of what tool you added and how you verified the paths

Reporting bugs

Open an issue at github.com/Prashant-123/aiclean/issues with:

• Your OS and version
• Node.js version (node --version)
• The command you ran
• The error output

Architecture

aiclean/
├── bin/index.js              CLI entry (all commands + safeguards)
├── core/
│   ├── engine.js             Orchestrator
│   ├── scanner.js            Scan engine with insights
│   ├── cleaner.js            Clean engine with logging
│   └── registry.js           Adapter registry (auto-populates)
├── adapters/
│   ├── base.js               Adapter factory (DRY — one function creates all adapters)
│   └── definitions/          Tool definitions by category (add new tools here)
├── config/                   Config system (~/.aicleanrc)
├── utils/                    Size, logging, platform, safety, auth utilities
├── telemetry/                Local usage statistics
└── api/                      API client for aiclean.tech

License

MIT — see LICENSE