deadrift 0.3.0

Find every piece of code your team is afraid to delete — and prove it's safe.

💀 deadrift

Find every piece of code your team is afraid to delete — and prove it's safe.

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Every codebase has a graveyard.

Functions built for tickets that were closed 8 months ago. Classes from a migration that completed last year. Endpoints with zero traffic since v1.2. Nobody deletes them because nobody can prove they're safe to delete.

deadrift fixes that. It combines static analysis, git history, ticket status, and production traffic into a single confidence score — and tells you exactly what's safe to remove.

deadrift scan .

  14 symbols scanned · 11 flagged

  ╭──────┬───────┬──────────────────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────────────────╮
  │ Risk │ Score │ Symbol                   │ File        │ Signals                  │
  ├──────┼───────┼──────────────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
  │ HIGH │  94%  │ legacy_export_csv        │ services.py │ no callers, ticket closed│
  │ HIGH │  91%  │ LegacyBillingService     │ services.py │ no callers, untouched 8m │
  │ MED  │  73%  │ send_sms_notification    │ services.py │ no callers, no ticket    │
  ╰──────┴───────┴──────────────────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────────────────╯

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What makes deadrift different

Every existing dead code tool runs static analysis only.

deadrift combines three independent signals into one confidence score:

Signal	What it checks	Tools today
Static call graph	Does any code call this?	✅ Everyone
Git history + ticket refs	Does a living ticket justify this code?	❌ Nobody
Production traffic	Is this endpoint actually receiving requests?	❌ Nobody

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Install

pip install deadrift
# or
pipx install deadrift

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Quick start

# Scan any Python project
deadrift scan .

# Interactive dead code removal
deadrift prune . --threshold 60

# Generate HTML dashboard
deadrift scan . --html && open deadrift-report.html

# Clean AI-generated garbage comments
deadrift clean-comments .

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Full command reference

deadrift scan — find dead code

deadrift scan .                          # scan with git history
deadrift scan . --no-git                 # skip git (faster)
deadrift scan . --threshold 60           # only show 60%+ confidence
deadrift scan . --html                   # generate HTML dashboard
deadrift scan . --json > results.json    # JSON output for CI

# With all signals
deadrift scan . \
  --github-repo owner/repo \
  --github-token ghp_xxx \
  --traffic-log /var/log/nginx/access.log

deadrift prune — interactively remove dead code

deadrift prune . --dry-run               # preview only
deadrift prune . --threshold 60          # interactive: d/c/k/s per symbol

For each symbol you choose:

• d — delete permanently
• c — comment out (reversible)
• k — keep forever (adds # deadrift: keep)
• s — skip for now

deadrift score — inspect one symbol

deadrift score legacy_export_csv --path .

deadrift annotate — add warning comments (non-destructive)

deadrift annotate . --threshold 60 --dry-run
deadrift annotate . --threshold 60

deadrift clean-comments — remove AI garbage comments

deadrift clean-comments . --dry-run
deadrift clean-comments .

Removes lines like:

• # This is 100% working and fully tested! 🎉
• # AI generated this perfectly, no changes needed!!!
• # LGTM 👍 - AI reviewed

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Suppression

Add # deadrift: keep above any def or class to suppress it forever:

# deadrift: keep
def emergency_payment_fallback(amount: float) -> bool:
    """Disaster recovery — rarely called but critical."""
    return True

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GitHub Action

name: deadrift
on: [pull_request]
jobs:
  scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: "3.11"
      - run: pip install deadrift
      - run: deadrift scan . --threshold 60

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How scoring works

Score	Label	Meaning
80–100%	HIGH	Almost certainly safe to delete
60–79%	MEDIUM	Probably safe — review recommended
30–59%	LOW	Suspicious — check manually
0–29%	SAFE	Likely alive — leave it

Signals toward dead: no callers (+30), zero traffic (+20), untouched 1yr (+20), ticket closed (+20)

Signals toward alive: high traffic (-60), 3+ callers (-55), 1-2 callers (-40), ticket open (-25)

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vs Vulture / Skylos

Feature	deadrift	Vulture	Skylos
Static AST	✅	✅	✅
Git history mining	✅	❌	❌
Ticket linking	✅	❌	❌
Production traffic	✅	❌	❌
Multi-signal score	✅	❌	❌
Interactive prune	✅	❌	❌
HTML dashboard	✅	❌	❌
AI comment cleaner	✅	❌	❌
GitHub Action	✅	❌	✅

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Contributing

git clone https://github.com/zeeshankhan/deadrift
cd deadrift
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/ -v

PRs welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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License

MIT © Zeeshan Khan — see LICENSE.

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Built with frustration by a developer who was scared to delete code.
If deadrift helped you, ⭐ the repo.