Hard Cut

Hard Cut

Use this when a feature should die, not linger.

Rules

• Delete the surface. Do not deprecate it.
• Do not leave throw new Error("Not implemented"), placeholder notices,

"feature removed" banners, or TODOs about bringing it back unless the user explicitly asks.

• Do not keep compatibility aliases, deprecated shims, fallback parsing,

migration bridges, or dead exports.

• Delete tests for deleted behavior. Keep tests only for the behavior that

still exists.

• Delete comments that describe deleted code or mourn the old feature.
• If removal exposes adjacent dead code, keep cutting until the graph is clean.

Sweep

1. Find the real surface area:

• exports
• commands and flags
• routes
• UI entrypoints
• feature flags
• docs and examples

2. Trace references with rg. 3. Delete the implementation and the glue:

• call sites
• types
• state
• tests
• docs
• comments

4. Grep again for the removed name and obvious aliases. 5. Run the narrowest honest verification for the surviving product.

Smells

• deprecated notices
• not-implemented throws
• stub handlers
• dead enum or union members
• permanently-false feature-flag branches
• unused env vars and config
• tests that only prove the deleted feature used to exist

Bias

If the choice is between deleting more code and leaving a zombie surface, delete more code.