# Remove a feature the product decided to stop offering

A feature the product no longer offers, removed one place at a time once traffic confirms nobody uses it.

Category: Tech debt and deprecations
Source: https://letsship.ai/use-cases/retire-a-sunset-feature
Published: 2026-08-25

## Goal

Remove a sunset feature from the codebase, surface by surface.

## Acceptance criteria

- Traffic evidence shows the feature is unused
- Interface, API, jobs, and data are handled in a stated order
- Users are notified before any user-visible removal
- Data is exported or retained per the stated policy before deletion

## What lands as proof

Traffic evidence first, then a staged removal in a documented order, so nothing user-visible disappears without warning.

## Prompt

Copy this to an agent to open the ticket:

```text
Create a Linear issue in my team and assign it to the SHIP agent.

Title: Retire the {feature} feature

Description: Remove a sunset feature from the codebase, surface by surface.

Acceptance criteria:
- Traffic evidence shows the feature is unused
- Interface, API, jobs, and data are handled in a stated order
- Users are notified before any user-visible removal
- Data is exported or retained per the stated policy before deletion

Before you create the issue, confirm the sunset decision is actually made and replace {feature}. Name the surfaces it touches.
```

## Questions

### What does the agent actually change?

The ticket is scoped to one outcome: remove a sunset feature from the codebase, surface by surface. Work that serves that outcome is in scope, and anything outside it is left for a separate ticket, so the pull request stays reviewable.

### How do I know the work is done?

The pull request carries the evidence, not only the diff. Here that means traffic confirmed at zero before removal, tests updated, so a reviewer can confirm the result without reproducing the work locally.

### How much oversight does this need?

The run stops for the plan, and the review bar is raised afterwards so that smaller suggestions block the merge too, not only serious findings.