Developer project folders accumulate gigabytes of node_modules/, .venv/, target/, build/, and other build artifacts over time. Most of that disk space is regenerable junk that can be safely removed and restored with a single command.

Sweep scans your projects, compares the full project size against the artifact size, and shows you the exact percentage of junk in each project — then lets you reclaim it all interactively.

  SWEEP — 11 projects | 19.0 GB reclaimable (93% junk)

  PROJECT                        TYPE         FULL SIZE      ARTIFACTS   % JUNK
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  cloud-dashboard                 Next.js        13.1 GB       12.8 GB    97.7%
  pulse-mobile                    Flutter         3.1 GB        3.0 GB    96.8%
  nexus-admin                     Node.js         1.7 GB        1.6 GB    94.1%
  microkit-api                    Next.js       580.0 MB      556.8 MB    96.0%
  datastream-scraper              Node.js       315.0 MB      310.2 MB    98.5%
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  TOTAL                                          20.5 GB       19.0 GB    92.7%

  You can reclaim 19.0 GB out of 20.5 GB (93% is junk)

  [Space] select  [a] all  [Enter] delete  [q] quit

cloud-dashboard is 13.1 GB, but 97.7% of that is just node_modules/ and .next/ cache. The actual source code is only ~300 MB.

Installation

pip install sweep-cli

Usage

# Scan the current directory
sweep

# Scan a specific path
sweep ~/projects

# Dry run — display results without launching the interactive TUI
sweep ~/projects --dry-run

# Output results as JSON (useful for scripting)
sweep ~/projects --json

# Only show projects with 100 MB+ of artifacts
sweep --min-size 100MB

# Only show projects not modified in the last 6 months
sweep --older-than 6m

# Limit the scan depth
sweep --depth 3

Output Breakdown

For each detected project, Sweep displays:

In most cases, 80-98% of a project's disk usage is artifacts — files that are automatically regenerated by running npm install, pip install, cargo build, or equivalent commands.

Interactive TUI

Sweep includes a built-in interactive terminal interface for browsing and selecting projects:

Color coding:

• Green — selected for deletion
• Red — project has uncommitted git changes (proceed with caution)

Supported Ecosystems

Sweep detects 10 ecosystems automatically:

Git-Aware Safety

Sweep checks each project's git status before performing any deletion:

• Clean — no uncommitted changes; safe to delete artifacts
• Dirty — uncommitted changes detected; highlighted in red as a warning
• No git — projects without a git repository are displayed without a status indicator

All targeted artifacts (node_modules/, .venv/, target/, etc.) are fully regenerable and safe to remove. They can be restored at any time by running the appropriate install or build command.

How It Works

1. Recursively walks the directory tree, looking for project marker files (package.json, Cargo.toml, pyproject.toml, etc.)
2. Identifies the ecosystem and locates the corresponding artifact directories
3. Calculates the full project size vs. artifact size to determine the junk percentage
4. Checks git status for each project to flag uncommitted changes
5. Presents results in a sortable, interactive TUI
6. Deletes only the selected artifacts — source code is never modified or removed

Zero runtime dependencies — built entirely on the Python standard library (curses, os, shutil, argparse).

Support

If Sweep helped you reclaim disk space, consider supporting the project.

License

MIT