Safety First: Why Git Needs a Safer Way to Clean Up Branches

The common Git cleanup one-liner is a documented hazard that regularly costs developers uncommitted work—whether from forgotten current branches, overzealous filtering, or unsafe force deletions. branchtidy solves this by inverting the typical automation paradigm: dry-run is the default, critical branches are protected automatically, and destruction requires explicit intent and confirmation. This approach exemplifies how tools handling destructive operations should be designed—with safety as the primary feature, not an afterthought.