deslop

name	deslop
description	Use when the user says "deslop", "remove debug code", "find placeholders or stub code", or "remove dead code".
metadata	{"short-description":"Certainty-graded slop cleanup"}

deslop: restore the no-slop invariant, preserve behavior

Restore the invariant that production code has no debug leftovers, placeholder bodies, swallowed errors, hardcoded credentials, or formatter noise. Classify every finding by certainty; apply only HIGH-certainty mechanical fixes; MEDIUM and LOW are report-only unless the user explicitly asks for a separate manual refactor.

The detailed pattern catalog lives in references/slop-catalog.md, indexed by behavioral category; within a category, rows are keyed by language, or by Any where the signal is language-independent. Load it when choosing an exact pattern recipe for a language, or when deciding whether a finding is fixable. Skip it when you are only classifying certainty or picking an autofix strategy — the contract and strategy vocabulary below are complete on their own.

When to Apply / NOT

Apply when the request names AI slop, debug-code cleanup, placeholder/stub cleanup, empty error handlers, hardcoded secrets, dead code, or a pre-PR hygiene sweep.

Do not apply for broad architecture simplification, ordinary lint formatting, security audit beyond hardcoded credential patterns, or behavior-changing cleanup. Do not use this to justify deleting code whose purpose is unclear.

Certainty Contract

Level	Source	Action
HIGH	Deterministic regex/AST match in non-test, non-fixture, non-generated code	Eligible for mechanical fix, then repo tests
MEDIUM	Reasoned structural signal or codegraph/context signal	Report only; cite evidence; no auto-fix
LOW	Optional external CLI heuristic, if tool already exists	Report only; no install; no auto-fix

Certainty is not severity. A hardcoded token is HIGH certainty and high severity, but still usually flag-only because the safe fix is secret rotation plus replacement by an environment read. A trailing-space match is HIGH certainty and low severity, but safe to remove.

Workflow

1. Scope files. Prefer changed files when the user did not request a full sweep. Exclude tests, fixtures, mocks, examples, generated output, vendored code, lockfiles, build artifacts, and minified bundles:

   • **/test/**, **/tests/**, **/__tests__/**, *.test.*, *.spec.*, *_test.*, *Test.java
   • **/fixtures/**, **/mocks/**, **/testdata/**, **/examples/**, **/benches/**
   • dist/**, build/**, target/**, coverage/**, vendor/**, node_modules/**, *.min.*, generated/protobuf/openapi outputs
   • keep Markdown out of whitespace cleanup because trailing spaces can be semantic line breaks.

2. Phase 1: HIGH deterministic scan. Use search for line patterns and ast-grep where syntax shape matters. Record {file, line, pattern, certainty: HIGH, strategy}. Categories:

   • Debug output: the language's mechanism for writing to standard streams (console methods, print statements, debug macros, formatted-output calls, shell tracing), left behind after debugging. Exclude output that is the product — CLIs, loggers, and entrypoints that print by design.
   • Placeholder or unimplemented body: the language's mechanism for declaring a callable whose body was never written (empty block, no-op statement, not-yet-implemented throw or abort, TODO-marked panic).
   • Swallowed failure: the language's mechanism for intercepting a failure (catch/except/rescue block, error-return check, error match arm, signal trap) used to discard it, so the unhappy path continues with invalid state.
   • Crash-on-failure shortcut: the language's mechanism for asserting a fallible value succeeded (forced unwrap, unchecked cast or type assertion, abort-on-error) applied where the failure is recoverable. Opposite behavior to a swallowed failure and opposite remediation — error-propagation design, not a narrower handler. Flag HIGH for presence; never rewrite automatically.
   • Hardcoded credential: provider-issued secret literals — sk-, ghp_/github_pat_, AKIA, Bearer <token>, JWT-looking strings, private-key blocks, Slack/Stripe/NPM/Twilio/SendGrid/Discord token forms. These are keyed to identity providers, not languages. Flag only.
   • Placeholder text: filler left in code comments or string literals — lorem ipsum, asdf asdf, foo bar baz, replace this, TODO: implement.
   • Privilege and supply-chain hazard: commands that grant blanket permissions or execute remotely-fetched code (chmod 777, piping a download straight into a shell). Flag only; these need a permission or supply-chain decision, not an edit.
   • Whitespace artifact: mixed tabs+spaces on one indentation prefix, trailing whitespace outside Markdown.

3. Phase 1b: MEDIUM contextual scan. Use codegraph first when indexed; otherwise combine ast-grep, search, and direct reads of the narrow files. Report only:

   • Comment bloat: doc-to-code ratio >3 for a real function with at least 3 code lines, or verbosity ratio >2 comments per code line inside a function; filler/hedging/buzzword comments.
   • Dead or unreachable code: statements after return, throw, break, or continue that are not a language-required fallthrough case.
   • Commented-out code: a block of consecutive comment lines whose content is code rather than prose.
   • Mutable global state: a module-level binding named as a constant but declared mutable, or a mutable global collection outside settings/constants.
   • Missing safety justification: an escape-hatch construct entered without the adjacent comment its convention requires (an unsafe block with no safety rationale).
   • Suppression escape: a warning or type-check suppression applied instead of fixing the finding it hides.
   • Over-engineering indicators: file/export ratio >20, lines/export >500, directory depth >4 without real module boundaries.
   • Unsubstantiated capability claim: claims like "production-ready", "secure", "enterprise-grade", "scalable" with fewer than two concrete supporting code signals.
   • Infrastructure without implementation: Client, Connection, Pool, Service, Provider, Manager, Factory, Repository, Gateway, Queue, Cache, or Store values created but never used beyond setup/export.
   • Stub return values: a function whose only significant body line returns 0, null, undefined, None, nil, false, true, [], {}, "", empty collections, Default::default(), or Optional.empty(). Escalate attention when adjacent TODO/FIXME/STUB text exists, but keep auto-fix disabled.

4. Phase 2: LOW optional CLI scan. Findings in the catalog's Residual: external tool signals category. Run only tools already available in the repo or PATH; never install. Record findings as LOW and flag-only:

   • jscpd for duplication.
   • madge for cycles.
   • The linter the project already declares, derived from its manifest or project config rather than assumed (eslint, clippy, golangci-lint, ruff, ktlint, rubocop, phpstan, swiftlint, the .NET analyzers, and their equivalents).
   • If absent, write missing: <tool> in the report and continue.

5. Prioritize. Sort HIGH before MEDIUM before LOW; then severity; then scope proximity to changed files; then fix strategy. Keep a separate fixes list containing only HIGH findings with remove-line, remove-block, replace-whitespace, or add-comment strategies. Exclude every flag-only finding from automatic edits.

6. Fix HIGH only. Apply the smallest edit that removes the deterministic slop:

   • remove-line: debug prints, trailing whitespace, isolated commented-out code blocks.
   • replace-whitespace: convert mixed indentation to the file's dominant indentation style; strip trailing spaces.
   • add-comment: empty catch/except blocks only when the correct behavior is intentionally swallowing the error and the surrounding code proves that intent. Otherwise flag; do not invent logging.
   • remove-block: placeholder block only when it is unreachable/dead and removal cannot change API behavior. Stubs on live API surfaces are report-only.
   • flag-only: hardcoded secrets, crash-on-failure shortcuts, placeholder implementations, dead code requiring control-flow judgment, architectural smells.

7. Verify. Run the repo's own test command after fixes. Derive it from manifests in this order: package script (test, then check, then typecheck), cargo test, go test ./..., pytest, mvn test, gradle test, dotnet test, bundle exec rspec or rake test, composer test or phpunit, swift test, or the project's documented command. If no command exists, run the narrowest parser/type check available and state the limitation — and treat every fix as unverified, because the rollback gate has nothing to trip on.

8. Rollback on regression. If verification fails after applying fixes, immediately restore every changed file from the cleanup attempt with git restore -- <file...> and rerun the same verifier to confirm the baseline is back. Report the failed fix group as blocked, with file/line and failing command. Never suppress tests, rewrite expectations, or keep a partial cleanup after regression.

Anti-patterns

• Formatting the repo. Do not turn slop cleanup into style normalization.
• Secret deletion as remediation. Removing a token from source is not enough; require rotation and replacement with environment/config access.
• Deleting placeholder APIs. A stub that is part of public surface is a product gap, not dead code.
• Counting tests/fixtures/generated files. They intentionally contain fake tokens, placeholders, console output, and fixture weirdness.

Validation Gates

Gate	Pass Criteria	Blocks
Scope gate	Tests/fixtures/generated/vendored files excluded	Any auto-fix touching excluded files
Certainty gate	Only HIGH deterministic findings enter fixes	MEDIUM/LOW edit attempt
Strategy gate	Every fix has remove-line, replace-whitespace, add-comment, remove-block, or flag-only	Unclassified edit
Behavior gate	Repo verifier passes after fixes	Keep no cleanup; run rollback
Rollback gate	git restore -- <file...> restores changed files after regression and verifier confirms baseline	Any failed verification with retained edits

Deliver a compact report: changed files, HIGH fixes applied, MEDIUM/LOW findings left for manual inspection, verifier command and result, rollback action if any.