2026 OpenClaw Frontend in Practice:
Knip Unused-Export JSON on Remote Mac — PR-Readable Cleanup Summaries

1. Log noise: CI prints thousands of lines; reviewers miss which exports are actually removable.
2. Stale baselines: Agents compare against the wrong parent SHA and suggest deletions that main already fixed.
3. Secret leakage: Summaries paste absolute paths or tokens when scripts are sloppy.

1. Check out the pull-request head on the remote Mac and record GIT_SHA. Create .openclaw/reports/$GIT_SHA/raw/ for immutable inputs. If you replay the same SHA, refuse to overwrite raw JSON unless a --force flag is set in your wrapper so diffs stay trustworthy.

2. Install with the same lockfile as CI; run Knip JSON reporter to knip-report.json. Keep stderr separate so crashes differ from empty runs.

3. Transform with Node or jq: keep unused exports, sort paths for stable diffs.

4. Render pr_knip_summary.md from a fixed outline; cap bullets and upload large JSON as CI artifacts.

5. Post Markdown with <!-- openclaw-knip:$GIT_SHA -->; retry 429 with backoff.

Knip is a signal, not auto-delete: confirm dynamic imports and barrels before merge.

Commit knip.json or knip.ts; align entry with real entrypoints (CLI, Vite HTML, Next roots, workspace imports). Point project globs at the same tsconfig graph CI uses.

Use ignore for generated or Storybook-only paths; note each ignore in the summary false-positive section.

Pin Knip in devDependencies and document knip --reporter json --no-progress in README.openclaw.md. For monorepos, scope per package so exports map to the PR under review.

Under .openclaw/reports/<git-sha>/ store raw/knip-report.json, normalized/knip-unused-exports.json, and pr_knip_summary.md; gitignore the tree; upload knip-$GIT_SHA.zip from CI. In GitHub Actions, set retention days low for noisy branches but keep main artifacts longer so bisect stays cheap.

When commenting later, OpenClaw should fetch the CI artifact URL, mirroring build metrics summaries—log artifact_id beside status.txt. If you self-host on a Mac with a static egress IP, allowlist that IP on enterprise storage buckets that hold JSON mirrors.

mkdir -p ".openclaw/reports/${GIT_SHA}/raw"
knip --reporter json --no-progress > ".openclaw/reports/${GIT_SHA}/raw/knip-report.json"

Use slots: Fingerprint (repo, short SHA, Knip version), Counts (exports, files, optional unresolved), Top findings (paths + symbols, capped), Delta vs parent, False positives, Suggested PR title. Add a one-line Risk note when counts jump more than twenty percent versus the parent baseline so reviewers know the change is structural, not cosmetic noise.

• Metrics: publish totals, changed-package subset, and ignored-by-policy counts.
• Hygiene: no secrets—artifact names only.
• Length: keep prose short; tables live in JSON artifacts.

Barrels: Deep consumer imports can false-flag index.ts; tighten entry, split barrels, or document ignoreExports.

Dynamic imports: Prefer static specifiers or narrow ignores tied to loader code.

Tooling entries: Vitest, Playwright, or ESLint helpers need explicit entries or package-scoped runs.

Published APIs: Cross-check package.json#exports and API smoke before deleting outward-facing types.

• Lock Knip version and CLI flags checked into CI YAML.
• Emit JSON before Markdown; never let the LLM invent paths absent from JSON.
• Upload both raw and normalized JSON as CI artifacts with SHA in the name.
• Comment PRs using idempotent markers or update existing OpenClaw comments in place.
• Log false positives as structured notes so the next run shrinks triage time.
• Wire exit codes: non-zero when Knip crashes; zero when only findings exist so downstream OpenClaw can still post summaries.