Dead Code Cleanup · Revival Intelligence

Dead weight cleared.
Buried features revived.

NECRO delivers two things every codebase needs: deprecated and dead code that's genuinely safe to delete, and (when the evidence supports it) dormant features worth shipping again. Both verified against live callers and real code, never guesses.

476+
Scans Run
524
Findings Surfaced
5.7k
GitLab MCP Calls
NECRO · gitlab-org/gitlab-workhorse
feature/upload-accelerate Revive Now
Disabled 18 months ago. OpenSSL constraint resolved in v3.1.4. Upstream dependency now ships with the fix. Safe to re-enable.
18 months dormant 3 live evidence sources
middleware/legacy-proxy Candidate
Commented out. Original blocker may still apply. 2 callers in codebase. Needs team verification before removal.
9 months dormant 2 live callers
handler/deprecated-upload Safe to Delete
@Deprecated since 2022. Zero callers detected. Replaced by upload-accelerate. Ready for excision.
3 years dormant 0 callers

Your codebase has two problems

Dead code that should be deleted, and good features that were disabled for reasons that may no longer apply. Both compound silently, sprint after sprint.

Dead code that never left

Deprecated functions. Disabled handlers. // TODO: remove markers from 2020. They add noise, confuse onboarding, and make refactors risky, but nobody knows which ones are truly safe to delete.

Features killed too early

A library upgrade, a compliance change, or a sprint deadline shelved a working feature. The blocker was temporary, but the feature was never re-evaluated. It sits in the codebase, unshipped.

Manual archaeology doesn't scale

Hunting through blame logs, commit history, and issue trackers to figure out what's safe to delete, or what might be worth reviving, takes days. So teams skip it, and both problems compound.

Scan. Verify. Act.

Four stages: from a GitLab URL to a deletion issue or a Draft MR, depending on what the evidence says. The whole pipeline runs autonomously.

Forensic Scan
Paste a GitLab URL. NECRO reads commit history and per-line blame via GitLab MCP to find deprecated markers, disabled handlers, and shelved feature patterns.
Live Verification
Dead code is checked for live callers; NECRO never flags load-bearing code. Revival candidates are grounded against Google Search to confirm whether the original blocker still applies.
AI Verdict
Gemini 3 Flash delivers a verdict for every finding: Safe to Delete, Revive Now, Revival Candidate, or Keep as-is. Each call is backed by cited evidence, never a guess.
Auto GitLab Action
Mission Control opens a deletion issue for dead code and a Draft MR for revival candidates, with risk notes, evidence links, and the full plan already written. You review and merge.

Everything in one place

Two core registries (dead code cleanup and feature revival) plus four supporting modules covering the full lifecycle from first scan to merged MR.

Necrosis Registry

NECRO's most consistent finding. Surfaces deprecated functions, disabled handlers, and dead code markers, then checks live callers before ever suggesting deletion. Zero false removals by design.

Dead Code Cleanup

Dormant Feature Registry

When conditions align (a dependency updated, a blocker resolved), NECRO finds the features worth shipping again. Each finding is scored with live evidence: Revive Now, Candidate, or Keep Buried.

High-Value Revival

Mission Control

Give one instruction. The autonomous ADK agent runs the whole loop: scan, plan, self-critique, create real GitLab Draft MRs and issues, verify, report back. No babysitting required.

Autonomous Agent

Timeline Forensics

Visual analytics across all your scans. See when features were killed, why, how revivable they are, and which are the easiest, highest-value wins, all at a glance.

Analytics

Active Watchlist

Add repos to the watchlist and NECRO re-scans them automatically every 24 hours. The moment new dormant features appear, your team gets a Slack alert before they become technical debt.

Auto-monitoring

Revival Logs

A full audit trail: every GitLab issue and Draft MR NECRO has created on your behalf, with direct links. See exactly what was actioned, when, and in which repo.

Audit Trail

A multi-agent pipeline built for accuracy

NECRO never guesses. Every verdict is the result of a four-agent loop: scanner, analyst, adversarial critic, and reporter, each checking the others' work before you see a result.

No hallucinations
All findings are grounded against live GitLab blob search and real-time Google Search results, not training-data patterns.
Caller-checked before delete
Dead code is never marked safe to remove until NECRO has confirmed zero live callers in the codebase.
Adversarial self-critique
A second Gemini agent actively challenges every Revival recommendation before it reaches you. False positives don't survive the review loop.
necro-adk-pipeline · live execution
1
Scanner agent reading commit history via GitLab MCP…
→ blame: handler/deprecated-upload age: 1147d
→ pattern: @Deprecated + nolint:staticcheck
2
Verifier checking live callers via search_blobs
→ callers found: 0 safe_to_excise: true
3
Gemini 3 Flash synthesising verdict…
→ blocker: None confidence: 0.94
4
Critic agent challenging proposal…
→ challenge score: 0.12 verdict: PASS
5
Creating GitLab Draft MR with evidence links…
MR !4421 created status: draft ready: true

Numbers that matter

Every number is from real scans against real GitLab repositories, not simulations.

476+
Scans Executed
524
Dead Code Findings Surfaced
5.7k
Live GitLab MCP Calls
0
Load-Bearing Code Falsely Flagged

Dead code is expensive.
Revival is free.

Technical debt compounds silently. Every deprecated function left in the codebase adds cognitive overhead to every engineer who reads it. Every shelved feature that gets rebuilt from scratch wastes months of work already done.

30M+
GitLab developers facing this problem right now
23%
Extra overhead dead code adds to every refactor
4-10×
Cost to rebuild a shelved feature vs reviving it
<2 min
From GitLab URL to full dead code + revival report
The compounding problem
Dead code is not inert. It confuses onboarding, blocks refactors, and silently inflates test suites.
Teams reinvent shelved features because nobody knows the original blocker expired.
Manual archaeology through blame logs takes days. So teams never do it. The graveyard grows.
Opportunity Cost Calculator
How much is your graveyard costing you?
25 engineers
5 300
Dead Code Overhead / yr
$52,500
~3.5h/dev/week × $150/hr
Revival Opportunity / yr
$140,625
~4 shelved features × 40h rebuild avoided
Total recoverable value
dead code cleanup + revival opportunity
$193,125
Rough estimates based on industry averages: $150/hr loaded dev cost, 3.5h/week dead code friction per developer, 40h average rebuild cost per shelved feature. Not a precise business case.

Powered by the best

NECRO is built on Google Cloud's AI stack and the official GitLab MCP Server. Production-grade infrastructure from day one.

Gemini 3 Flash AI reasoning & verdicts
GitLab MCP Server Official search_blobs & blame
Google ADK Multi-agent orchestration
MongoDB Atlas Vector scan history
Slack Watchlist alerts & digests

Clean the dead. Revive the rest.

Paste a GitLab URL. NECRO tells you what's safe to delete and, when the evidence is there, what's worth reviving. Both verified. No guesswork.