“My Mac Was 98% Full. One Prompt Got 558GB Back.”
The exact step-by-step playbook for rescuing a full Mac with Claude Code. The risks, the guardrails, the context template, and the master prompt. Zero files lost on the original run. Six pages, free.
22→558GB
Free space
0
Files lost
5
Approvals needed
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What's Inside The Guide
Not a listicle of “empty your trash” tips. The full playbook from a real rescue: a 1TB MacBook at 98% full, back to 558GB free in about a day, with every deleted file either verified in the cloud, archived to a drive, or provably junk.
01
Read the risks first
This process deletes files. The guide opens with the five rules that keep it safe, including the one that matters most: no verified backup shown, no approval given.
02
Install Claude Code
One terminal command, sign in with your Claude account, start from your home folder. If you've never opened Terminal before, the guide walks you through it.
03
Set the guardrails
Which commands to approve freely, which to read twice, and why you never turn off permission prompts for this job.
04
Give it your context
A fill-in-the-blanks context block that tells Claude which folders are sacred, what's expendable, and where backups go. This is the step that makes the cleanup smart instead of reckless.
05
Paste the master prompt
The full 5-phase prompt: audit, junk sweep, backup verification, upload and archive, then systemize so your disk never fills up again.
06
Back up, verify, delete
How to verify backups byte-for-byte against an external drive or cloud storage (Google Drive via rclone, an MCP connector, or the platform's API) before a single file gets deleted.
A Straight Warning
This process deletes files, and a deleted file has no undo. The whole guide is built around one rule: nothing gets deleted without a verified backup or proof it's junk, and you approve every irreversible step yourself. If you want a cleanup tool that does everything silently in one click, this isn't it. That's the point.
Four Things That Bit Us
Learned the hard way on the original run, so you don't have to. All four are handled inside the guide.
Freed space stays invisible
macOS snapshots pin deleted blocks for 24 hours. We deleted 50GB and the free space barely moved, twice. The guide covers the one command that releases it instantly.
Dead sync folders lie
389GB of “backed up” files turned out to be local-only. The subscription had lapsed and the folder was the only copy, wearing a cloud costume.
Names lie, byte counts don't
The same video existed under different names locally and in the cloud. Exact byte-size matching caught what name matching missed.
Verify the copy, not the exit code
A copy command saying “done” proves nothing. File counts and total bytes have to match on both sides before anything gets deleted.