Safe File Deletion

When to use this skill

Use this skill only when files or directories must genuinely be deleted. Do not use it to move, rename, or relocate content that should remain; use mv instead.

This skill is particularly useful when:

• Refactoring code and removing obsolete files or directories
• Deleting obsolete duplicates after choosing the copy to keep
• Removing generated files that shouldn't be tracked
• Deleting obsolete files during large-scale code reorganization
• Deleting entire directories of old code

How it works

It runs the ai-safe-rm script which has an intelligent git-aware backup strategy. Use -r flag for directories.

Behavior

For files:

1. Tracked in git, unmodified: Files are deleted directly (can be recovered from git)

2. Tracked in git, modified: Files are moved to .safe-rm/<path>/<filename>.<hash>.<ext> (e.g., README.b72ae922.md) or .safe-rm/<path>/<filename>.<hash> (e.g., LICENSE.88fdc130) to preserve the modified version

3. Not tracked in git: Files are moved to .safe-rm/<path>/<filename>.<hash>.<ext> or .safe-rm/<path>/<filename>.<hash> for safety

For directories (requires -r flag):

1. All files unmodified tracked: Directory is deleted directly with rm -rf (can be recovered from git)

2. Contains modified tracked or untracked files: The script recurses through the directory, applying the file logic to each file individually. Only modified/untracked files are backed up, while unmodified tracked files are deleted. Empty directories are removed after processing.

The <hash> is the first 8 characters of the MD5 sum of the file content, ensuring unique backups of different versions.

Limitations

Only use this skill for files/directories within the current git repository.

For files outside the repository:

• Use regular rm or rm -rf directly
• These files cannot be recovered from git or backed up by this script

Pre-check before calling:

Before running ai-safe-rm, verify all paths are within the repo:

# Verify path is inside current repo
git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree && realpath --relative-to="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)" /path/to/file | grep -q '^[^.]' && echo "Inside repo" || echo "Outside repo"

Usage

When you need to delete files or directories as part of a refactoring or cleanup task:

1. Identify the files/directories to delete

2. Call ai-safe-rm [-r] <file1> <file2> ... to safely remove them

   • Use -r flag when deleting directories
   • Without -r, attempting to delete a directory will error

3. The script will output what action was taken for each file/directory

Important Notes

• This skill does NOT require user permission for deletion because:

  • Unmodified tracked files can be recovered from git
  • Modified/untracked files are backed up to .safe-rm/

• The .safe-rm/ directory should be added to .gitignore

• Backed up files can be restored manually if needed from .safe-rm/

Examples

All examples assume files are within the current git repository:

# Delete a single file
ai-safe-rm src/old-component.ts

# Delete multiple files
ai-safe-rm src/legacy/*.js

# Delete a directory
ai-safe-rm -r ./old-feature

# Delete multiple directories and files
ai-safe-rm -r ./tests/deprecated ./legacy src/unused.ts

For files outside the repository, use rm directly:

# Delete file outside repo
rm /home/user/.cache/temp-file.txt

# Delete directory outside repo
rm -rf /tmp/build-artifacts/