The problem every CTO has seen
Your developers keep filing tickets about broken toolchains. Someone's Python points to the wrong version. Node exists in three places. A critical build fails because which npm returns something nobody installed six months ago.
This isn't a training problem. It's entropy.
Dev machines accumulate cruft: half-removed installs, orphaned dependencies, config files from experiments that ended badly. Homebrew uninstalls the binary but leaves the cache. NPM removes global packages but not their PATH entries. Manual installs from GitHub releases never get tracked at all.
SnapPoint is an open-source attempt to fix this without replacing your existing package managers.
What it actually does
SnapPoint sits above Homebrew, NPM, Pip, and Cargo. It doesn't manage packages - it audits them.
The "Hunt" phase scans your system and builds an inventory: every global binary, every PATH entry, every manager it recognizes. For each tool, it tries to answer where it came from. Homebrew? NVM? Manually dropped into /usr/local/bin?
That origin story matters. "Ghost" binaries - tools no package manager claims anymore - often break builds by shadowing the versions you actually want. SnapPoint flags these explicitly.
It also catches orphaned dependencies (installed for something you deleted), duplicate tool versions competing in PATH, and broken symlinks pointing nowhere.
The cleanup angle
Most uninstall commands only remove the binary. Config folders in .config, state files, and caches stay behind. Reinstall later and the tool mysteriously remembers old settings.
SnapPoint includes community-driven "cleanup recipes" - instructions for fully removing a tool, including its hidden junk. This is why it's open source: no single person knows where every tool hides its cache.
There's also a "Doctor" mode for subtle issues: symlinks to deleted versions, global packages shadowing project-local ones, technically-installed-but-broken tools.
The enterprise context
This taps into DevOps hygiene that often gets ignored until onboarding takes three days or support tickets spike. Clean environments prevent bugs, speed new hires, and reduce "works on my machine" syndrome.
The alternative - containerization or immutable OS images - works for some teams but doesn't fit every workflow. SnapPoint offers a middle path: audit, understand, then decide.
Project lives at github.com/alexcloudstar/snappoint. Worth watching if you're tired of developers manually editing .bashrc to fix PATH conflicts.