rmvnm

A blazing-fast CLI tool to find, analyze, and purge node_modules directories across your filesystem.

Reclaim gigabytes of disk space from old projects, monorepos, and forgotten dev folders — with full visibility before deletion.

Installation

npm install -g rmvnm

Or run directly with npx:

npx rmvnm -p .

Features

• 🚀 Parallel scanning — processes directories concurrently for maximum speed
• 📏 Size analysis — calculates and displays size of each node_modules
• 📊 Clean table output — sorted by size with totals
• 📈 Progress indicators — real-time spinners and progress bars
• ❓ Safe by default — prompts for confirmation before any deletion
• 🔒 Symlink-safe — does not follow symlinks unless explicitly enabled
• 🧠 Smart traversal — skips .git, .cache, and inside node_modules

Usage

rmvnm -p <path>

Examples

Scan current directory:

rmvnm -p .

Scan a specific path:

rmvnm -p ~/projects

Skip confirmation prompt:

rmvnm -p . -y

Limit traversal depth:

rmvnm -p . --max-depth 3

Output results as JSON:

rmvnm -p . --json

Output

✔ Scan complete: 4 node_modules found
Calculating sizes [████████████████████████████████████████] 4/4
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┐
│ node_modules path                                            │ size          │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│ /projects/webapp/node_modules                                │ 612 MB        │
│ /projects/api/node_modules                                   │ 287 MB        │
│ /projects/shared/node_modules                                │ 98 MB         │
│ /projects/scripts/node_modules                               │ 24 MB         │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┘
Found: 4 node_modules
Total: 1 GB
Remove ALL listed node_modules? (y/n):

Options

| Option | Description | | ------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | | -p, --path <path> | Root path to scan (required) | | -y, --yes | Skip confirmation and delete immediately | | --json | Output results as JSON | | --max-depth <n> | Limit directory traversal depth | | --follow-symlinks | Follow symbolic links (disabled by default)|

Safety

• Prompts for explicit y/n confirmation before any deletion
• Never traverses inside node_modules — only detects and measures
• Skips .git and .cache directories during scanning
• Does not follow symlinks by default to prevent accidents
• Uses robust deletion with automatic retries

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• macOS, Linux, or Windows

License

MIT