Safety boundaries

Updated August 10, 2026

Trash only

Cleanup moves selected items to macOS Trash. Protect items cannot be selected, and CacheLens has no permanent-delete cleanup path.

Chat and index DBs are never Safe

Editor chat/history databases like Cursor's state.vscdb are always Review or Protect, never Safe. Deleting them can leave the history UI stuck on "Loading Chat…"; use the tool's built-in history cleanup instead.

Your protect list

Add one path, prefix, or glob per line to ~/Library/Application Support/CacheLens/protect. Matches become hard Protect even when the bundled catalog says Safe or Review.

Fail closed around running tools

CacheLens checks the owning tool before cleanup. A running tool, failed probe, or unknown process state refuses cleanup.

Symlinks and path containment

Scan does not follow directory symlinks. Cleanup resolves symlink targets and path traversal, then refuses any path that escapes the configured home.

Local and inspectable

Paths and filenames stay on your Mac. Rules ship in the app, and CLI dry-run reports the plan or refusal without moving anything.

Deliberately narrow

CacheLens is a classification-depth audit for AI developer storage, not a generic Mac cleaner or a Mole utility suite. Its fail-closed posture is design inspiration only; no Mole source code is used.