If you use Claude Code or similar AI-assisted development tools, they may keep local files related to your projects — context, memory, workspace state, and cached data. Before you start deleting folders to reclaim space, it is worth understanding what those files actually are.
This is not always junk
The most important thing to know upfront: AI project memory and context files are not junk by default. They may contain:
- Project-specific context that helps the AI give better answers for your codebase
- Conversation history relevant to ongoing work
- Local configuration that took time to set up
- Task state from workflows you have not finished yet
Deleting them will not break your computer. But it may degrade the quality of your AI-assisted work until the context is rebuilt — which takes time and effort you have already spent once.
Want to skip the hidden-folder hunt?
LLM Cleaner scans your Mac for local AI models, caches, indexes, and project memory — then shows what you can review, reveal, export, or safely move to Trash.
What is more clearly safe to review
That said, not everything AI tools store locally is valuable. Some categories that are more clearly worth reviewing:
- Context from projects you finished or abandoned months ago
- Logs from debugging sessions that are no longer relevant
- Cached data for projects that no longer exist on your machine
- Stale workspace indexes for repositories you have not touched in a year
The challenge is that distinguishing "valuable context" from "stale cache" requires looking at the files in context — not just finding the largest ones and deleting them.
The risk of treating all AI files the same way
Standard disk cleanup advice — find large files, delete them — works fine for media files and old downloads. It works poorly for AI tool storage, where the same directory might contain both rebuildable caches and project memory you have been accumulating for six months.
Deleting the wrong subfolder inside an AI tool's storage can silently remove context that the tool uses to understand your project. You will not get an error. The tool will just gradually seem less helpful.
Not sure what is safe to delete?
LLM Cleaner separates models, rebuildable caches, and project memory so you do not treat everything like junk.
A better approach
Before touching any AI tool's local storage, the useful questions are: what is here, how old is it, which active projects does it relate to, and is this category of file rebuildable or not.
Answering those questions by hand — exploring unfamiliar directories, interpreting file structures, checking modification dates one by one — is the kind of work that takes an afternoon and still leaves you uncertain.
Local AI storage is messy. Cleanup should not be.
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