A public-safe record of a preservation-first cleanup project that began with the Mac and is expanding to connected digital-storage systems: Mac, iPhone, Google Drive, and GitHub repositories with their local clones.
This repository is the project's public-safe decision and accountability layer. It documents how decisions are made, what is verified, what is intentionally preserved, and what measurable result follows. Private inventories, exact targets, evidence crosswalks, and execution artifacts remain local. This is not a one-click cleanup utility and contains no machine-specific deletion commands.
The project completed three controlled phases on 2026-08-02:
- A read-only storage and duplicate audit.
- A corrected second pass that removed dependency, environment, worktree, and hard-link false positives.
- A Tier 1 cleanup limited to five revalidated, regenerable caches.
Tier 1 removed 11,792 cache files. Target-level accounting showed 856,268,800 allocated bytes released, while APFS free space increased by 845,258,752 bytes. Fourteen other provisional cache entries were skipped because their owners were active, their contents crossed a safety boundary, or their ownership was ambiguous.
No repository, environment, database, cloud-managed folder, managed media library, personal recording, research state, backup, or higher-tier candidate was changed.
On 2026-09-01, a separate authorized Rule 0 workspace-maintenance run removed 80 exact duplicate generated reports—40 ZIP and 40 HTML files—after current content, link, owner, repository, and retained-copy checks. Target accounting showed 46,993,408 allocated bytes released. All 83 remaining ZIP files were preserved after project-level review. No tracked file, repository history, private record, submission artifact, or executable cross-course dependency was removed. See the sanitized run record.
| Scope | Current state | Public control page |
|---|---|---|
| Mac | Audit v1 complete; corrected audit v2 complete; Tier 1 complete; Tier 2 pending | scopes/mac/ |
| iPhone | Not started | scopes/iphone/ |
| Google Drive | Not started | scopes/google-drive/ |
| GitHub repositories and local clones | Limited course-root preflight complete; reconciliation pending | scopes/github/ |
Each scope requires its own audit, approval, execution, and verification phase. Evidence and approval do not transfer between systems.
Large, old, or duplicated does not mean disposable.
Every action must pass a preservation test:
- Is the item explicitly in scope?
- Is it independently recoverable or automatically regenerable?
- Is its owning process inactive?
- Are links, repositories, environments, databases, and managed content excluded?
- Is there a canonical retained copy when redundancy is claimed?
- Has the user approved this exact risk tier?
- Can the result be measured and audited afterward?
The recursive workspace contract is documented in
Rule 0 — Clean Up After Yourself.
| Location | Purpose |
|---|---|
docs/RULE_0.md |
Recursive cleanup, course-repository, and cross-course reference contract |
docs/SAFETY_MODEL.md |
Five cleanup tiers and hard safety boundaries |
docs/WORKFLOW.md |
End-to-end audit, approval, execution, and verification flow |
docs/ROADMAP.md |
Ordered cross-system program plan and approval gates |
docs/DATA_PLACEMENT_POLICY.md |
Draft canonical-location and minimal-local-storage rules |
docs/BACKUP_AND_RECOVERY_POLICY.md |
Draft proof required before local deletion can be proposed |
docs/RETENTION_POLICY.md |
Draft retention states and category-transition rules |
docs/AUDIT_METHOD.md |
Storage, duplicate, hard-link, and archive methodology |
docs/STATUS.md |
Current public-safe project status and next decision gate |
docs/DECISION_LOG.md |
Durable record of preservation and cleanup decisions |
docs/APPROVAL_WORKFLOW.md |
Evidence required before an action can advance |
docs/PRIVACY_BOUNDARY.md |
What must remain outside public Git |
docs/PROVENANCE.md |
Relationship between private evidence and public summaries |
docs/AI_USE_LOG.md |
AI assistance, verification, and human responsibility |
audit/2026-08-02-tier1.md |
Sanitized Tier 1 run record |
audit/2026-09-01-rule0-workspace-maintenance.md |
Sanitized archive, duplicate, and course-repository maintenance record |
data/public-metrics.csv |
Machine-readable, non-identifying project metrics |
templates/ |
Candidate-review and run-report templates |
scripts/validate_repo.py |
Public-safety and documentation validation |
DISCLAIMER.md |
Limits, responsibility, and non-advice notice |
SECURITY.md |
Private reporting instructions for accidental disclosure |
The private working audit remains local. This public repository does not include:
- absolute home-directory paths or account identifiers;
- raw file inventories, duplicate manifests, or command logs;
- iPhone exports or backups, Google Drive inventories, repository inventories, cloud listings, or local cleanup plans;
- personal filenames, media, transcripts, messages, or email;
- repository worktree paths, private project names, or untracked-file details;
- device backups, cloud-storage listings, database contents, or application profiles;
- content hashes tied to private files;
- credentials, tokens, secrets, or configuration databases.
See the full privacy boundary.
Start with the candidate-review template. Keep machine-specific evidence in a private workspace and publish only aggregated results after reviewing them against the privacy boundary. The automated validation is a backstop, not a substitute for human review.
- Mac: Tier 1 complete and verified; Tier 2 pending
- iPhone: not started
- Google Drive: not started
- GitHub and local clones: limited course-root preflight complete; dirty or divergent roots require repository-specific reconciliation
- Cross-system data-placement, backup/recovery, and retention policies: drafted in this change
This project stops at each approval boundary. A future tier requires a new evidence review and explicit authorization.
Released under the MIT License.