Dead flags introduce technical debt and degrade application complexity. FlagPilot monitors real-time SDK health telemetry to run dead flag detection, identifying unused or permanently rolled-out flags automatically.
Health Scoring Criteria
Flags are checked periodically by the stale detection worker and marked with one of the following statuses:
- 🌱New — The flag has 0 evaluations but was created less than 14 days ago. This is normal staging/development preparation.
- ✅Healthy — Active flags with evaluations recorded within the past 30 days.
- ⚠️Inactive — No evaluations recorded for 30–89 days. This indicates the feature code might have been removed, or is rarely triggered.
- 🚨Needs Review — Never evaluated, and created 14 or more days ago (possible dead branch or abandoned flag), or has recorded 0 evaluations for 90+ consecutive days.
Best Practices for Flag Hygiene
- ✓Delete feature flags from the dashboard or CLI once they are rolled out to 100% and the fallback code is removed.
- ✓Use the stale list endpoint (GET /v1/flags/stale) to hook flag inventory reports into developer Slack channels.
- ✓Set up alerts for when production flags enter 'Needs Review' status.
FAQ
How does Dead Flag Detection interact with local caches?
Configurations are synced down using Edge Config or fallback REST triggers. The client automatically reads evaluations in-memory, resulting in sub-millisecond local evaluation times.
Where can I obtain support for Dead Flag Detection?
You can open a support ticket in your dashboard, check the community roadmap, or consult the FlagPilot Platform Status page.