Show & Tell: SpecLock now catches 'sweep away', 'wipe', 'purge' as delete synonyms (v5.5.7)

[sgroy10]

Show & Tell: SpecLock now catches "sweep away", "wipe", "purge" as delete synonyms (v5.5.7)

Quick Show & Tell because this one was fun to build and users have been asking for it.

The problem

SpecLock's semantic engine originally recognized the obvious delete verbs: delete, remove, drop, destroy. That caught maybe 80% of violations. The remaining 20% hid behind creative phrasing.

Real examples from my audit logs:

• "Let me sweep away the old migration files" (rule: never delete migrations)
• "I'll wipe the stale cache directory" (rule: cache is actually live state, not stale)
• "Time to purge the deprecated handlers" (rule: deprecated != safe to remove)
• "I'm going to absorb the auth middleware into the main router" (rule: middleware stays independent)

None of these tripped the old engine because none of them used the canonical verbs.

The fix in v5.5.7

Expanded the synonym taxonomy:

{
  "intent": "delete",
  "synonyms": [
    "delete", "remove", "drop", "destroy", "erase",
    "sweep away", "wipe", "wipe out", "purge",
    "clean up", "clean out", "clear out",
    "get rid of", "do away with", "eliminate",
    "prune", "strip out", "tear out",
    "absorb into", "inline away", "refactor out"
  ]
}

Each synonym is weighted by contextual confidence. Phrases like "refactor out" score lower on their own but combine with other signals (file deletion in the diff, function removal, etc.) to cross the threshold.

Before / after

Test input (from the verified test case tests/semantic/delete-synonyms.test.ts):

User prompt: "sweep away the unused helpers in utils/legacy/"
Diff: deletes utils/legacy/format.ts, utils/legacy/parse.ts
Active lock: "never delete files in utils/legacy/ — they're still referenced by cron jobs"

Before v5.5.7:

Semantic audit: PASS (no violations detected)
Reason: no canonical delete verbs matched

(The file was deleted. The cron jobs broke. Not great.)

After v5.5.7:

Semantic audit: FAIL
  Violation: intent=delete on utils/legacy/ (confidence 0.94)
  Matched synonyms: "sweep away"
  Conflicting lock: "never delete files in utils/legacy/"
  Suggestion: this lock requires human override

How to try it

Update:

npm install -g speclock@latest
# or
npx speclock@5.5.7 audit --semantic

Then run a semantic audit on a recent diff you suspect might have slipped through:

npx speclock audit --semantic --since HEAD~20

Report back if you catch anything juicy.

What's next

v5.6 extends this taxonomy to architectural verbs: "migrate off of", "port away from", "extract from". See the v5.6 roadmap discussion for details.

If you've hit a synonym that SpecLock misses, reply to this thread with the exact phrase and I'll add it to the taxonomy. This is how the engine gets smarter — from real-world misses reported by users.