speckit-refactor-clean

To safely remove dead code, you run static analysis tools like knip, ts-prune, vulture, deadcode, or cargo-udeps to surface unused exports and dependencies, then delete them only after your full test suite passes. This ensures behavior remains intact across JavaScript, Python, Go, and Rust projects.

The best way to find unused dependencies is using specialized static analysis tools like knip and depcheck for JavaScript or TypeScript, and vulture for Python. These tools surface unused modules and redundant code, allowing you to classify findings before safe deletion.

Dead code removal does not work safely without a passing test suite. The safe deletion loop requires running unit and integration tests after each pruning step to validate correctness, automatically rolling back deletions if the tests fail to prevent breaking behavior.

To detect and prune dead exports in a Rust or Go project, use cargo-udeps for Rust and deadcode for Go. These tools identify redundant modules and unused dependencies, which are then classified for safe deletion after test verification.

The limitation of using static analysis for dead code detection is the risk of false positives or breaking dynamic runtime behavior. To mitigate this, findings must be classified into caution and danger categories, requiring full test suite validation before any safe deletion occurs.