Safety boundaries
Updated August 11, 2026
Trash only
Cleanup moves selected items to macOS Trash. Protect items cannot be selected, and CacheLens has no permanent-delete cleanup path.
Safe ≠ permanently reclaimable
Safe means regenerable with a known recovery path - not a guarantee the bytes stay gone. Items tagged May recreate (browser caches, DerivedData, some logs) often refill after the tool relaunches. Snapshot packs are Review and can refill even faster.
Fail closed when rules go stale
Safe rules carry verifiedAgainst metadata and layout markers. If verification is missing or the tool directory no longer matches, CacheLens demotes the item to Review and shows an honesty badge - it does not pretend daily IDE updates are required, and it never keeps a fake Safe label.
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.
Snapshot packs and runaway growth
Cursor snapshots and .pack checkpoint chunks can balloon to hundreds of GB in days and refill fast after deletion. CacheLens marks them Review, never Safe, explains that clearing them may lose checkpoints while keeping your code and settings, and advises quitting Cursor first. It audits and receipts only - no retention or auto-delete.
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.