Every org has a graveyard: Flows named OLD_DO_NOT_USE, fields no layout shows, permission sets nobody holds. And every cleanup initiative stalls on the same sentence: “the last time someone deleted something unused, quoting broke for two days.”
The epistemic gap
“Unused” is a claim about references; “safe to delete” is a claim about the world. Metadata dependency data records what references what — but scheduled Apex, invocable actions and direct page placements can show zero incoming edges while being entry points; and reports, list views, dashboards and API consumers are not in the dependency data at all. A component with no recorded references is a candidate, never a verdict.
A discipline that holds up
Rank candidates by evidence (zero recorded references, inactive-only referencers, no similarity twins) rather than by name. Check the invisible surfaces — reports, list views, integrations — the one step no scan does for you. Retire reversibly: deactivate before delete, export the change as a bundle, keep a rollback. And prove it: re-scan, confirm the graph changed as planned, and let the shrinking history make the next deletion easier to approve.
Horus Eye’s cleanup signals are built on that humility — the field-retirement rule skips any field with even one reference whose status it cannot read, because a claim the data cannot support is worse than a missed candidate.
