#4105 Stale plugin version folders pile up in cache: 8 versions / ~3.7 GB in ~3 months, in-use sweep last ran 2026-06-11

Summary

On Windows, ~/.claude/plugins/cache/thedotmack/claude-mem/ accumulates a full copy of the plugin for every version ever installed, and nothing ever prunes them. Each copy carries a complete node_modules (the bundled tree-sitter parser C sources alone are ~23–25 MB per language, per version), so each version costs ~450–476 MB.

What I found today

~/.claude/plugins/cache/thedotmack/claude-mem/
├── 13.12.4    457 MB   ← stale
├── 13.13.0    447 MB   ← stale
├── 13.13.1    456 MB   ← stale
├── 13.15.2    475 MB   ← stale
├── 13.24.0    475 MB   ← stale
├── 13.24.1    475 MB   ← stale
├── 13.24.5    475 MB   ← stale
├── 13.24.10   476 MB   ← stale
└── 13.24.23   476 MB   ← only version referenced by installed_plugins.json

8 stale copies = 3.7 GB reclaimable on a single machine after ~3 months of autoUpdate: true marketplace updates.

Additionally, ~/.claude/plugins/.last_inuse_sweep contains 2026-06-11T08:48:17.118Z — i.e. the in-use sweep last fired on June 11, and every version installed after that date simply piled up. Either the sweep is supposed to cover stale version folders and stopped running, or it doesn't handle this case at all.

Why it matters beyond disk space

Stale version dirs have already caused real breakage, not just wasted disk:

#3736 — stale plugin-cache hooks respawn old-version workers and migrate the shared DB backwards (schema downgrade + column loss)
#3446 — worker launched from an old plugin version dir silently drops session_summaries.discovery_tokens, breaking all session summaries

Request

After a successful update to version N, prune cached versions older than N (optionally keep N-1 for rollback) — as originally proposed in #2358, which was moved to Discussion #2359 in May and has had no activity since
and/or provide a documented supported cleanup command for users
if the in-use sweep is meant to handle this, it appears to have stopped running after 2026-06-11 — worth checking on Windows

Environment

Windows 11 Pro 22H2 (build 22621)
claude-mem 13.24.23, installed from the thedotmack marketplace with autoUpdate: true
plugin cache location: %USERPROFILE%\.claude\plugins\cache\

Refs #2358, #2359, #3736, #3446