MIT open-source Windows 10/11 toolkit in Python/CustomTkinter, shipped as a single portable .exe (English + Russian UI). Five tabs: Clean (22 categories, analyze-first with scan-only switch and per-file log), Install (24 programs fetched from vendor CDNs, verified by Authenticode publisher signature or pinned SHA-256), Optimize (12 tweaks behind a system restore point), Schedule (Task Scheduler headless cleanup), Log. Pitch leads with a deletion-safety model: whitelisted folders, hard blacklist (System32, WinSxS, Program Files), junctions and symlinks skipped at scan and refused at delete with resolved-path checks. Self-signed cert; no telemetry, no background services.
Single contributor vladcodex (61 commits on a squashed history); 'I'm the author' on reddit. Cadence is intense: 5 releases (v1.1.0-v1.4.0) in the first 7 days.
Mechanical checks derived from the fields above. Each row is one fact; "not yet checked" means exactly that, not a failure. There is no composite score; read them together.
Track record
12 days ago
Source published
Not yet checked
Release signing
Not yet checked
Security contact
Not yet checked
Reproducible builds
Not yet checked
Telemetry
Not yet checked
Runs elevated
Not yet checked
Auto-update channel
Not yet checked
Recent activity
Last seen 6 days ago
Research notes
Extreme fresh-account launch: reddit account vlad_swept created 2026-10-22 13:11 UTC and posted its first Swept announcement 23 minutes later; the account exists only to promote the app.
Relaunch a week after the first post: the 2026-10-28 announcement was rewritten to lead with the safety model.
Safety model is the pitch, not a footnote: junction/symlink skip-and-refuse with resolved-path whitelist check, hard-coded blacklist, per-file log, System32-pinned PATH lookups, ACL-locked installer staging - reads like it was written against a security checklist.
Scope beyond cleaning: also a signature/hash-verified software installer and a tweaks tool, so more attack surface than a pure cleaner.
Combative-polite author voice: demanded a malware accuser 'provide evidence within 24 hours (assuming you aren't a bot, of course)'; signs off 'Best regards, Vlad'.
Self-signed Authenticode cert ('CN=Vladcodex') with an honest SmartScreen caveat in the readme; VirusTotal flagging addressed in comments as a false positive.
GitHub account vladcodex created 2026-03-11 but dormant until swept; profile-readme repo appeared 2026-10-28, after the second launch wave.
Origin story varies by audience: launch posts motivated the app by cleaner distrust ('refuses to follow symlinks'), while the r/windowsdev post (1xms4m5) motivates it as 'Every one I tried asked for something' (toolbars, telemetry).
Author states releases ship PyInstaller --optimize 2 'so the exe doesn't carry a map of every check I make' (r/windowsdev, 1xms4m5): docstring-and-assert stripping as obscurity, moot while the MIT source is public.
Self-reported test quality (1xms4m5): claims 162 tests on the delete path and describes a deliberately introduced bug that escaped the suite because a test 'checked that the function returned, not what it returned'.
GitHub shows two contributors, but the second is a noreply-email collision: orphaned pre-squash commits (still fetchable) were authored 'Swept Developer <swept@users.noreply.github.com>', an address GitHub resolves to the unrelated dormant account @swept (Wenyu Zhou, 2018).
History was squashed and re-authored to vladcodex just before the first promotion: deleted branch 'backup/pre-squash' (Oct 22), tag v1.1.3 deleted/recreated 3x; first local commit 2026-10-20, one day before repo creation.
Earliest author promotion found, 23 minutes after the reddit account was created; superseded by the 1xhpd23 rewrite a week later. Author addressed a VirusTotal false positive in comments.
Relaunch post a week after the first, rewritten to lead with the safety model; the thread is where the author admitted 'AI assistance'.
I'm the author, so this is self-promo — Intro cliche
most Windows cleaners don't tell you what they are about to delete until it is gone, and some will happily follow a junction out of %TEMP% into your Documents folder. — Problem statement
Swept is a single portable .exe (Python + CustomTkinter, MIT) — Virtue
no telemetry, no background services, no install required — Trust signal
Honest caveats: the .exe carries a self-signed certificate, so SmartScreen still reports an unknown publisher — Trust signal
What I would like to know: which category is useless, what is missing, and where you would be afraid to press the button. — Engagement hook