Ask Claude to Audit Your Project for Unused Dependencies
Dependency creep is real — every refactor leaves a package behind. Claude can cross-reference your dependency list against your source files and flag the suspicious ones.
# Pipe depcheck output to Claude for analysis
npx depcheck --json | claude "Explain each unused dependency listed here.
For each one, tell me whether it's safe to remove in a Next.js project
that uses Tailwind, Radix UI, and Prisma. Flag any that might be
implicit peer deps or build-time tools."
Claude understands that some packages (PostCSS plugins, Babel presets, type definition packages) never appear in import statements but are still required. It won't just tell you to delete everything.
For PHP projects using Composer:
cat composer.json | claude "Review this composer.json for a Laravel app.
Flag any packages that look like they might be unused or redundant.
I'm on Laravel 11 and PHP 8.3. Also flag any packages that have
known security advisories as of early 2024."
You can also make it more targeted by including your app structure:
find app/ -name "*.php" | xargs grep "^use " | sort -u | \
claude "Here are all the namespace imports in my Laravel app.
Cross-reference against my composer.json and flag any vendor
packages that are never imported: $(cat composer.json)"
Fewer dependencies means faster installs and a smaller attack surface — run the audit.
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Set up Claude Code as an automated reviewer in your CI pipeline — on every pull request, it reads the diff, checks for bugs, security issues, missing tests, and convention violations, then posts its findings as a PR comment. Your human reviewers get a head start because the obvious issues are already flagged before they look.
Before deploying, tell Claude to read your project — migrations, environment variables, queue workers, scheduled tasks, caching, third-party integrations — and generate a deployment checklist that's specific to your app. Not a generic "did you run migrations?" list, but one that knows YOUR infrastructure and catches the things YOUR deploy can break.
Instead of writing a README from memory or copying a template, tell Claude to read your project and generate one that's actually accurate — real setup instructions from your config, real architecture from your directory structure, real API examples from your routes, and real prerequisites from your dependency files.