The Cloudlet is a personal technical blog that publishes long-form posts on software engineering practice. This article documents a real refactoring project in which roughly 19,000 lines of dead compiler code were removed over about a week, with no reverts or fix-up commits a month later.
The core method combines AI assistance with strict human oversight. The LLM colors a dependency graph and classifies every node, while the author manually reviews each classification. Deletion is then broken into small, reviewable steps, from scope definition and scaffolding to true deletion, surgery, and post-op cleanup.
The post is aimed at software engineers, compiler developers, and tech leads interested in large-scale code cleanup and cautious AI-assisted workflows. It uses C++, MLIR, and compiler tooling as its concrete setting but emphasizes transferable process discipline.
Readers can follow the step-by-step structure as a template for their own deletion projects. The main takeaway is that AI can accelerate analysis and classification, but trust should come from small, verifiable steps and manual review rather than from the model itself.
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