Audit dead code

Skill krixon/skills/skills/audit-dead-code

Sweep a codebase for dead code — unreachable branches, never-called functions, orphaned modules — and surface each as a finding. Static-first, no tool run required. Use when the user wants to find dead code, hunt unreachable or unused code, find orphaned modules, or asks "what's unused?" / "what can we delete?".From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add krixon/skills --skill audit-dead-code

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

1 stars1 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

3.8 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Dead-Code Audit

Find code that can never be reached or is never referenced — and surface each region as a finding. Run the shared audit method in ../AUDIT-METHOD.md with the lens, sub-dimensions, and dimension below.

The aim is risk-weighted removal candidates, not a raw unused-symbol dump — target regions where carrying dead code costs the most to keep or most misleads a reader.

Risk lens: reachability and reference (step 1)

Rank candidates by the blast radius of being wrong — both ways. A region that looks live but isn't, on exported or public surface, outranks a private one-liner: it misleads every reader and agent that trusts the surface. Rank by:

Surface — exported / public symbols that look like live API but have no caller outrank internal-only ones.
Size and reach — an orphaned module or a large unreachable branch outranks a dead one-liner.
Churn — code recently touched but never reached is a stronger removal signal than long-stable code that may have an off-tree consumer.

Current state: confirm it's genuinely unreachable (step 2)

Before flagging, prove the region is actually dead. A reference existing somewhere does not make this path live; trace whether the reference reaches. Check for what keeps a symbol alive:

Dynamic / reflective callers — string-keyed dispatch, registries, reflection, dependency injection, serialisation hooks.
Entry points — main, CLI/route registration, framework lifecycle hooks, plugin manifests, scheduled jobs.
Test-only use — referenced only by tests; note it, but a symbol that exists solely to be tested is itself a removal candidate.
Re-exports — a barrel/__init__/index that re-exports the symbol keeps it public even with no in-tree caller.

Consume a dead-code report (a linter's unused-symbol output, coverage showing an unreached branch) as a signal here if one exists — never require running one.

Sub-dimensions to sweep (step 3)

Unreachable branches — code after an unconditional return/throw, conditions that can't be true, guards that subsume each other.
Never-called functions — defined symbols with no caller, dynamic or static, and no re-export keeping them public.
Orphaned modules — whole files imported by nothing and reachable from no entry point.
Dead config / constants — flags, options, or constants that no code path reads.

Drop low-confidence noise — a symbol you can't confirm is unreferenced (plausible dynamic use you can't trace) is not a finding.

Dimension (step 4)

Dimension — dead-code (the sub-dimension goes in the title/evidence, e.g. "orphaned module …", "unreachable branch in …" — never as a new top-level dimension)
Suggested category — enhancement (removal / cleanup); a dead path that hides a live bug — a guard that was meant to fire but can't — is a bug
Where — the dead module / type / function
Evidence — why the region is unreachable or unreferenced, the live paths you ruled out, and what removing it buys

Handover

Per ../AUDIT-METHOD.md → Handover.

artifact: findings (in ../contracts/finding.md shape)
default: capture — dedups against open issues, culls, files survivors as needs-triage
alternatives: stop (review the findings yourself first)