Two operations with very different consequences, kept clearly apart: one tidies, one destroys.
Archive - reversible
Archiving retires a collection without losing it. An archived collection drops out of Artifacts, out of recall and out of search, so nobody's instance keeps surfacing a superseded thing - but it's still there and can be restored at any time.
"Archive the old migration plan - it's superseded by v3."
kythe archive <collection-id>
kythe archive <collection-id> --restoreUse it liberally. Most "we should delete this" instincts are actually "this shouldn't come back in recall", and archiving does that without a decision you can't undo.
Archiving a wiki page archives everything beneath it too. A page and its subtree go together or not at all - archiving a section and leaving its children reachable by URL would strand them under a parent nobody can open. Restoring works the same way.
A collection also archives itself when its last file is moved out into another collection - an empty collection is noise on every surface, but its comments and history are worth keeping, so it's archived rather than deleted. Restore it if you meant to leave it empty.
Delete - permanent, with a grace window
Deleting is for content that must genuinely go. A collection has to be archived first, which makes accidental deletion much harder.
Deletion schedules the collection for permanent removal after a 30-day grace window. Inside that window you can cancel:
kythe delete <collection-id>
kythe delete <collection-id> --undeleteWhen the window elapses, the content and its stored bytes are erased - in every workspace it was shared into, not just the one you deleted it from. Shared work is one collection mapped into several places, so deleting it deletes it.
Forgetting a memory
Memory has its own vocabulary, and it's worth knowing which you want:
| Want | Do |
|---|---|
| Stop recall surfacing it, keep it for audit | Deprecate |
| Replace it with something more current | Supersede - remember again with the same title and project |
| Remove it entirely, no history | Forget |
forget removes the memory, its artifacts and their bytes. No history is retained - that's the point of it, and it's the one to reach for when something was written somewhere it shouldn't have been. See Memory.
Deleting a workspace
Deleting a workspace irreversibly erases everything app-owned in it: collections, artifacts, memory, tags, and the object-store bytes those rows point at. There's no grace window at collection level to save you here.
Export it first if there's any chance you'll want the contents. The export is a readable archive and can be imported back into a fresh workspace.
Your own account
Deleting your account is on your profile page, and it's cancellable while it's pending. You can also export your own data from there. See Your account.