Readwise Reader Prune

Two-pass stale document removal with safe defaults.

IRON LAW: Dry Run First

NEVER pass --delete without showing the user the dry-run output first.

1. Run without --delete (dry run)
2. Show the user the candidate list and category breakdown
3. Get explicit confirmation
4. THEN run with --delete

How It Works

Pass 1: Fetch all documents updated in the last N months (the "safe set" -- these have recent activity and are never pruned).

Pass 2: Fetch all documents matching filters. Remove from candidates any document that:

• Is in the safe set (recently active)
• Has highlights (num_highlights > 0)
• Has an excluded tag

Commands

# Dry run (always do this first)
readwise prune
readwise prune --months 6
readwise prune --category rss --location new
readwise prune --exclude-tag "keep" --exclude-tag "reference"

# Limit candidates shown
readwise prune --months 3 --limit 20

# JSON output (for review)
readwise prune --months 6 --json

# Actually delete (after reviewing dry run)
readwise prune --months 3 --delete
readwise prune --category rss --months 1 --delete

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--months <n>	3	Documents inactive for this many months are candidates
--location <loc>	all	Filter: new, later, shortlist, archive, feed
--category <cat>	all	Filter: article, email, rss, pdf, epub, tweet, video
--exclude-tag <tag>	none	Skip documents with this tag (repeatable)
--limit <n>	all	Cap number of candidates
--delete	false	Actually delete (default is dry run)
--json	false	Output as JSON

Recommended Workflows

Weekly RSS cleanup

readwise prune --category rss --months 1 --location new
# Review, then:
readwise prune --category rss --months 1 --location new --delete

Quarterly deep clean

readwise prune --months 6 --exclude-tag "reference"
# Review, then:
readwise prune --months 6 --exclude-tag "reference" --delete