Cleanup

Cleanup

Run a quick post-merge maintenance flow on the local repo: pull main up to date, drop branches whose remotes are gone, and report what was tidied. This is the pair to /yeet — /yeet ships the work, /cleanup keeps the local checkout sane afterwards.

Source of truth

• The user's local git repo is the source of truth for branch state.
• The user's git remote is the source of truth for "is this branch still needed?".
• Hydrant MCP isn't called here — issue-status updates belong to /yeet. /cleanup is purely local housekeeping.

Preconditions

Abort with a short message — do not silently fix any of these — unless all of the following are true:

• The current branch is main (or the local primary branch the user named in their Alignment block, see below).
• The working tree is clean (no uncommitted or unstaged changes).
• A git remote called origin exists.

If the user is on a feature branch with uncommitted work, tell them to git stash or commit first, then re-run /cleanup from main. Do not switch branches for them.

Alignment lookup

Read the <!-- BEGIN: hydrant alignment --> block from AGENTS.md (at the repo root) if it exists. The relevant key for /cleanup is:

• branch-strategy — trunk-based | feature-branches | gitflow. Affects what counts as a "stale" branch:
  • trunk-based and feature-branches (default): any local branch whose upstream is gone is a delete candidate.
  • gitflow: leave long-lived branches like develop, release/*, and hotfix/* alone even if their upstream looks gone — they probably aren't.

If AGENTS.md is missing or the Alignment block is absent, fall back to feature-branches and print a one-line nudge: Tip: run /align once to record this codebase's branching conventions.

Workflow

1. Fetch with prune. git fetch --prune origin. This updates remote refs and removes references to remote branches that have been deleted server-side.

2. Rebase main onto origin/main. git rebase origin/main. If the rebase has conflicts, stop and report — do not try to resolve them. The user has unpushed commits on main, which is unusual; let them sort it out.

3. Identify stale local branches. A local branch is stale when:

   • Its upstream tracking ref is gone (gone shown by git branch -vv), and
   • Its tip is reachable from origin/main (i.e. it was merged or its commits already landed via squash/rebase).

   Squash-merge is the common case in Hydrant flows — the local branch tip won't be an ancestor of main, but the patch has landed. Treat [gone] upstream as the primary signal; the merge check is a sanity filter.

4. Apply branch-strategy exceptions. If the Alignment value is gitflow, exclude develop, master (when distinct from main), and any branch matching release/* or hotfix/* from the delete list, even if their upstream looks gone.

5. Delete stale branches. Use git branch -D <name> only after the [gone] check above passes. Never delete branches that have unmerged work and still have an upstream.

6. Report. Print:

   • Synced main SHA (short form, e.g. a1b2c3d).
   • Number of branches deleted, with names.
   • Anything skipped due to branch-strategy: gitflow exceptions.
   • Anything skipped because it had unmerged work — surface those by name so the user knows they exist.

What this skill never does

• Switch branches without being asked. If the user isn't on main, abort with instructions; don't move them.
• Force-delete branches with unmerged work. [gone] upstream is a permission to clean up landed branches, not to nuke unfinished ones.
• Push, force-push, or otherwise mutate the remote.
• Call any Hydrant MCP tool. Issue-status updates happen in /yeet.
• Run any test, lint, or build command. This is housekeeping, not verification.

Edge cases

• No remote configured. Abort with a one-line note. There's nothing meaningful to "sync" without a remote.
• main is named differently (e.g. master, trunk, develop). Detect via git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD or fall back to whatever branch origin/HEAD points at. If detection fails, ask the user once which branch is canonical.
• User is in a worktree. Cleanup is meaningful per checkout — sync that worktree's main (or alternative primary), and prune local branches as usual. Do not try to clean up other worktrees you don't control.
• Many stale branches at once (10+). Print the list and ask for confirmation before bulk-deleting. Don't surprise the user.
• Branch is checked out in another worktree. git branch -D will refuse. Skip it and report it — the user will resolve manually.

Why this matters

Stale local branches accumulate fast in a fast-moving repo. The next time the user runs git branch they'll squint at 40 dead refs and miss the live one. /cleanup keeps the local view aligned with what's actually in flight.