[Bug]: MacOs T3 fills up disk

[robert2411]

Before submitting

• I searched existing issues and did not find a duplicate.
• I included enough detail to reproduce or investigate the problem.

Area

apps/server

Steps to reproduce

Enable create new worktree per chat, create a lot of chats -> full disk.

Expected behavior

The work trees are cleaned up at some point.

Actual behavior

They are not :)

Impact

Minor bug or occasional failure

Version or commit

No response

Environment

MacOs

Logs or stack traces

Screenshots, recordings, or supporting files

No response

Workaround

No response

[juliusmarminge]

Triage

This matches current shipped behavior, not a regression and not a wash of #9085.

New worktree (defaultThreadEnvMode = "worktree") creates a full git checkout under the environment’s worktrees/ directory for each chat ({T3 home}/worktrees/<repo>/<branch>). A project setup script can also run there, so each thread can carry its own node_modules / build artifacts. macOS is incidental — the same lifecycle exists on every platform.

On main those directories are not reaped by settle, archive, inactivity, or PR merge. The only removal path is the desktop “Delete the worktree too?” prompt after thread delete (useThreadActions + worktreeCleanup). That prompt is gated on localApi, so web and mobile never clean up. Server thread.delete does not touch disk. git worktree prune only drops stale Git admin entries after a directory is already gone.

Why this is not #9085

#9085 / PR #9116 are a delete-path bug: deleting an archived thread skips that prompt and orphans the worktree. Landing #9116 still leaves this report open — creating many New-worktree chats without deleting them (or settling/archiving them) will keep filling the disk. The autoclean comment on #9085 is the same product ask as this issue.

Related work (already accepted, not shipped)

• [Feature]: Clean up worktrees for settled threads without deleting history #5208 / [Feature]: Automatically clean up old and inactive Git worktrees #5269 / [Feature]: Add per-project retention limits for settled worktrees #6659 asked for manual remove-without-deleting-history, TTL/inactive cleanup, and retention limits. They were converted to Discussions (2026-08-15), not implemented.
• PR Add safe worktree inventory, pruning, and revival #4742 implemented inventory + reaper + settings and was closed unmerged.
• PR feat(worktrees): manage lifecycle on orchestrator v2 #5589 is the successor on orchestrator v2 (stacked on still-open feat(orchestrator): introduce new orchestrator #2829): server-owned inventory, safe prune, configurable autoPruneAfterDays (default 14), optional immediate orphan cleanup, and revival. That is the intended fix for this report.
• [Bug]: Background git fetch fills up entire disk when fetch exceeds the 5s timeout (regression of #1965) #3525 is a different disk-fill (tmp_pack_* from timed-out git fetch).

Workaround

Delete the thread on desktop and confirm worktree removal, or remove the trees yourself (git worktree remove / delete under ~/.t3/worktrees). To avoid growth, use Current checkout or New thread in this worktree instead of New worktree per chat.

Keeping this open as the live disk-growth report for the missing worktree lifecycle. No new product call — #5589 is the plan.