npkl: Node Package Killer

A handy, lightweight CLI tool to identify and remove node_modules directories. Written in Rust for blazing-fast performance.

This utility recursively searches for node_modules directories starting from your current working directory (or a specified path), calculates their size and presents an interactive menu to select and delete what you no longer need.

• 🚀 Blazing Fast: Written in Rust, optimizing recursion and size calculations.
• ⚡ Lightweight & Efficient: Minimal memory and CPU footprint — ideal for virtual machines, CI/CD environments, and resource-constrained systems.
• 📊 Smart Sorting: Sort discovered directories by size (largest first) or by file path (A-Z).
• 🎯 Interactive Control: Simple, intuitive TUI interface to review, select and batch-delete items.
• 📦 Zero Runtime Dependencies: Single self-contained binary, no Node.js runtime required to clean up your projects.

Download the latest compiled binary for your platform directly from the GitHub Releases page - no Rust toolchain required.

Requires Rust 1.95 or later:

cargo install npkl

git clone https://github.com/valsaven/npkl.git
cd npkl
cargo build --release

Note: The release profile already enables strip, lto, and codegen-units = 1 for a minimal binary footprint (~396 KB).

npkl [path] [--sort size|path]

• [path] - Optional target directory to scan. Defaults to the current directory (.).
• --sort <MODE> - Controls entry sorting: size (largest first, default) or path (A-Z).

• Up/Down Arrows: Move selection
• Space: Toggle entry selection
• Enter: Confirm and delete selected directories
• Esc: Quit without making changes

cargo test

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.