Built-in rules

purgeit ships with a default ruleset ported from the original CLEANUP.sh. These rules are grouped into always-safe names (deleted anywhere they appear) and gated names (deleted only when a sibling manifest proves the directory is generated output).

Always-safe rules

These directory names are matched wherever they appear in a project tree. Once found, the walker stops descending into them.

JavaScript / TypeScript

Name	What it is
node_modules	npm / yarn / pnpm dependencies
.next	Next.js build output
.nuxt	Nuxt build output
.astro	Astro build cache
.docusaurus	Docusaurus build cache
.angular	Angular build cache
.svelte-kit	SvelteKit build output
dist	Generic build output
out	Generic build output
.turbo	Turborepo cache
.cache	Generic framework cache
.swc	SWC compiler cache
.vite	Vite cache
.parcel-cache	Parcel cache
.expo	Expo cache
storybook-static	Storybook build output
playwright-report	Playwright report output
test-results	Playwright test results
coverage	Test coverage reports
.nyc_output	NYC coverage data

Rust

Name	What it is
target	Cargo build output

Python

Name	What it is
__pycache__	Python bytecode cache
.venv	Virtual environment
venv	Virtual environment
.pytest_cache	pytest cache
.mypy_cache	mypy cache
.ruff_cache	Ruff cache
.tox	tox environments
.build	Generic Python build output

Apple / Xcode

Name	What it is
DerivedData	Xcode derived data

Gated rules

These names are too generic to trust blindly. purgeit only reports them when a sibling file in the same parent directory matches the gate.

Name	Gate condition	Why it’s gated
Pods	A sibling Podfile exists	Pods/ is only meaningful in CocoaPods projects
build	A sibling Podfile, *.xcodeproj, *.xcworkspace, CMakeLists.txt, package.json, pyproject.toml, requirements.txt, build.gradle, or build.gradle.kts exists	build/ is used by many ecosystems
.gradle	A sibling build.gradle, build.gradle.kts, settings.gradle, or settings.gradle.kts exists	Gradle project metadata
bin	A sibling *.csproj or *.sln exists	.NET build output
obj	A sibling *.csproj or *.sln exists	.NET build output

Pruned metadata

These directories are treated like version-control metadata and are never descended into while scanning:

• .git
• .hg
• .svn

Customizing the ruleset

You can extend, replace, or narrow these defaults with a purgeit.config.ts.

Restrict the CLI to a subset of rules:

purgeit --targets node_modules,dist

Disable all gated rules and only match always-safe directories:

purgeit --no-gated

Where the defaults come from

The built-in names are defined in src/rules/default-rules.ts and src/rules/gate-conditions.ts. They are merged into a ResolvedRuleSet at runtime via defaultRuleSet().