Honeycomb Cleaner

A command-line tool to clean up inactive datasets and columns in Honeycomb to reduce clutter and improve performance.

Features

• 🗂️ Dataset Cleanup: Find and delete datasets with no activity in the last N days
• 📊 Column Cleanup: Find and delete unused columns in active datasets
• 🛡️ Protection Handling: Automatically disable deletion protection when needed
• 🎯 Selective Targeting: Filter by specific dataset names
• 📋 Rich Tables: Beautiful output with clickable dataset URLs
• 📊 Progress Bars: Real-time progress tracking with error grouping
• ⚠️ Safety First: Multiple confirmations before deletion

Run / Installation

You can run the tool directly using uvx

uvx honeycomb-cleaner

To install it permanently:

uv tool install honeycomb-cleaner

Configuration

Set your Honeycomb configuration API key as an environment variable:

export HONEYCOMB_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Your API key needs the following permissions:

• Send Events (to read dataset metadata)
• Manage Queries and Columns (to read and delete columns)
• Create Datasets (to delete datasets)

Usage

Basic Dataset Cleanup

# List datasets inactive for 60 days (default)
honeycomb-cleaner

# List datasets inactive for 30 days
honeycomb-cleaner --days 30

# Delete inactive datasets (interactive)
honeycomb-cleaner --delete

# Also delete datasets with deletion protection
honeycomb-cleaner --delete --delete-protected

Column Cleanup

# Check for unused columns in active datasets
honeycomb-cleaner --check-columns

# Check for columns unused in last 30 days
honeycomb-cleaner --check-columns --days 30

# Delete unused columns (interactive)
honeycomb-cleaner --check-columns --delete-columns

Selective Cleanup

# Only consider specific datasets
honeycomb-cleaner --name app-endpoints --name shipping-api

# Check columns in specific datasets only
honeycomb-cleaner --check-columns -n app-endpoints -n logs

# Delete datasets and columns for specific services
honeycomb-cleaner --delete --delete-protected --check-columns --delete-columns -n old-service

Combined Operations

# Complete cleanup: datasets + columns
honeycomb-cleaner --delete --delete-protected --check-columns --delete-columns

# Dry run: see what would be deleted
honeycomb-cleaner --check-columns --days 90

Command Line Options

Example Output

Honeycomb Environment: production

Found 85 active datasets
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name                        ┃ Created    ┃ Last Activity ┃ URL                                                                           ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ current-service             │ 2024-01-01 │ 2024-01-08    │ https://ui.honeycomb.io/team/environments/prod/datasets/current-service/home │
│ active-logs                 │ 2024-01-15 │ 2024-01-07    │ https://ui.honeycomb.io/team/environments/prod/datasets/active-logs/home     │
└─────────────────────────────┴────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Found 3 inactive datasets
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name                        ┃ Created    ┃ Last Activity ┃ URL                                                                           ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ old-service                 │ 2023-05-01 │ 2023-05-15    │ https://ui.honeycomb.io/team/environments/prod/datasets/old-service/home     │
│ test-dataset                │ 2023-06-01 │ Never         │ https://ui.honeycomb.io/team/environments/prod/datasets/test-dataset/home    │
│ legacy-logs                 │ 2023-04-01 │ 2023-04-20    │ https://ui.honeycomb.io/team/environments/prod/datasets/legacy-logs/home     │
└─────────────────────────────┴────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Checking columns in active datasets...
Found 245 inactive columns across 12 datasets

Inactive columns (last 60 days) - current-service (showing first 100 of 245)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Column Name                     ┃ Type   ┃ Created    ┃ Last Used  ┃ Hidden ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩
│ debug_column                    │ string │ 2023-01-01 │ 2023-05-15 │ No     │
│ old_field                       │ int    │ 2023-02-01 │ Never      │ Yes    │
│ legacy_attribute                │ string │ 2023-03-01 │ 2023-06-01 │ No     │
└─────────────────────────────────┴────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────┘
... and 145 more columns

⚠️ WARNING: COLUMN DELETION MODE ⚠️
This action cannot be undone!

Do you want to delete 245 inactive columns? (yes I do/no): yes I do

 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% (245/245)
Deleting: legacy_attribute from current-service

✓ Deleted 242 columns successfully
✗ Failed to delete 3 columns:

  HTTP 404:
    - missing_column from old-service
    - deleted_field from test-dataset

  Column not found:
    - nonexistent_column from active-logs

Summary: 242 deleted, 3 failed out of 245 total

Safety Features

• Environment Display: Shows which Honeycomb environment you're working with
• Multiple Confirmations: Requires explicit confirmation before deletion
• Exact Text Matching: Must type "yes I do" exactly for final confirmation
• Progress Tracking: Real-time progress bars with current item display
• Error Grouping: Failed operations are grouped by error type for easy debugging
• Error Handling: Clear error messages for API failures
• Dry Run Mode: Preview what would be deleted without --delete flags

Common Use Cases

1. Regular Cleanup

# Monthly cleanup of old datasets and columns
honeycomb-cleaner --days 90 --delete --delete-protected --check-columns --delete-columns

2. Service Decommissioning

# Remove all traces of an old service
honeycomb-cleaner --delete --delete-protected --check-columns --delete-columns -n old-service-name

3. Development Environment Cleanup

# Clean up test datasets in dev environment
honeycomb-cleaner --days 30 --delete -n test-dataset -n debug-logs -n temp-data

4. Column-Only Cleanup

# Just clean up unused columns, keep all datasets
honeycomb-cleaner --check-columns --delete-columns --days 60

Troubleshooting

Permission Errors

If you get 401/403 errors, ensure your API key has the required permissions:

• Go to Honeycomb UI → Environment Settings → API Keys
• Edit your API key and add missing permissions

Deletion Protection

Some datasets may have deletion protection enabled. Use --delete-protected to automatically disable protection before deletion.

Large Datasets

For datasets with many columns (>100), only the first 100 are displayed in tables for performance reasons. All columns are still processed for deletion.

Development

To run from source:

cd honeycomb-cleaner
uv sync --dev
honeycomb-cleaner --help

License

License under Apache 2.0 . See LICENSE file.