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Archiving ends a session and releases its pod and persistent volume, but keeps the session record and its message history so you can find it later. Use archiving as the default cleanup path — reserve permanent deletion for sessions whose data must be removed.

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When to archive

  • You’re done with a session and want to reclaim its cluster resources.
  • You want to tidy up your sidebar without losing the record of what happened.
  • You don’t need the session right now, but you may want to reference the conversation or pick up the work later.
If the session data must be permanently removed (for example, to satisfy a data retention policy), an admin can delete it instead.

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Who can archive

  • You can archive or restore any session you own.
  • Admins can archive, restore, or delete any session in the organization.
Deleting a session is restricted to admins.

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Archive a session

  1. In the sidebar, hover the session and open its menu (the three-dot icon).
  2. Select Archive.
  3. Confirm the action.
The session moves to the Archived status. Its pod is stopped, its persistent volume is packaged into a compressed archive and uploaded to your organization’s S3 bucket (when S3 storage is configured), and its messages are retained in the database.

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Automatic archiving

Admins can configure Cake Agents to automatically archive sessions that have been idle for a set number of days. This keeps the sidebar tidy without anyone having to remember to clean up.
  • The sweep runs on a daily schedule.
  • Only sessions that have been inactive longer than the configured threshold are archived.
  • Cake Agents measures inactivity from the last time the agent finished a model response in the session. If the agent has never responded, Cake Agents measures from when the session was created. Pod restarts, deploys, and opening the session don’t count as activity.
  • Starred sessions are always skipped.
  • Sessions already archived or deleted are skipped.

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Configure auto-archiving

This is an organization-wide setting. Only admins can change it.
  1. Go to Settings → Organization → General.
  2. Toggle Automatically archive inactive sessions on.
  3. Set Archive sessions after to the number of days of inactivity to allow (1–365).
  4. Optionally, select Archive now to run the rule immediately instead of waiting for the daily sweep. You’ll be asked to confirm before anything is archived.
Turning the switch off (or setting the value to 0) disables auto-archiving.

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Protect a session from auto-archiving

Star a session to exclude it from automatic archiving. Starred sessions are never touched by the sweep, no matter how long they’ve been idle. Unstar the session when you’re done, and it becomes eligible again on the next sweep.

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Find archived sessions

Use the sidebar filter to show archived sessions:
  1. Select the filter icon next to Recent Sessions.
  2. Under By Status, select Archived.
By Status supports multiple selections. Select Live, Inactive, or Archived to toggle each status on or off. The list shows sessions that match any selected status. For example, select both Live and Archived to see active and archived sessions together. Clear every status to show all sessions.

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What archiving preserves

Viewing archived messages inline is not yet available.

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Restore an archived session

Restoring brings an archived session back to life with its files, git state, and conversation history intact. Cake Agents provisions a new pod and volume, and the pod unpacks the session’s archive from S3 before the agent starts. The session keeps its original ID, so existing links still work. Restoring requires S3 storage. The session must have been archived while S3 was configured.
  1. Open the archived session, or find it in the sidebar with the Archived status filter.
  2. Open the session menu (the three-dot icon).
  3. Select Restore.
The session moves to Initializing, then to Live once the agent is ready. The session timeline shows a restored event. If Cake Agents can’t start the restore, it shows an error with the reason: Deleted sessions can’t be restored.
A restored session’s volume starts at the configured starting volume size, not the size the volume had grown to before archiving.

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Storage requirements

Archived session data is uploaded to S3-compatible object storage. If your deployment doesn’t have S3 configured, archiving still ends the session and keeps the message history, but the session’s files won’t be preserved. See S3 storage to configure a bucket.