storage_ballast_helper
A cross-platform Rust daemon that prevents AI coding workloads from filling a disk, predicting storage pressure and reclaiming space through deterministic, explainable artifact cleanup and ballast pools before builds or agents crash.
storage_ballast_helper, invoked as sbh, is a cross-platform daemon that defends against disk-full incidents caused by agent swarms and build systems that can fill a disk faster than a person can react. It continuously monitors storage pressure with an EWMA-plus-PID controller that reacts before disks reach critical levels, and reclaims space through layered controls: multi-volume ballast pools that free space on the exact filesystem under pressure, deterministic artifact scoring, and hard safety vetoes that always protect paths such as .git, protected directories, too-recent files and open files.
A zero-write emergency mode can recover a disk that is already nearly full without needing database or configuration writes, protect markers and configurable globs keep critical repositories out of cleanup entirely, and every action is recorded in an evidence ledger that an explain command can show, alongside status, dashboard, stats and blame commands. Production rollout moves through shadow, canary and enforce modes with automatic fallback, and the codebase forbids unsafe Rust code in both its library and binary.
It installs through a shell script, with a dedicated macOS quick start covering launchd and Homebrew, and is written in Rust.