# Retention

Canonical: https://docs.flowrelay.app/operate/retention/
Markdown: https://docs.flowrelay.app/operate/retention.md

FlowRelay keeps receipt evidence for investigation, but retained event bodies and recovery surfaces have explicit windows.

## What retention affects
Retention determines which recovery actions are still possible after an event arrives.


- Material: Retained event body; After it expires: Replay is unavailable. Ask the sender to send a fresh event if recovery requires the original content.
- Material: Receipt facts; After it expires: Safe facts can remain useful for investigation even when the raw event body is gone.
- Material: Diagnostics shares; After it expires: Share a new diagnostics share from current safe facts if support still needs evidence.
- Material: Dedupe keys and action-preview records; After it expires: Duplicate suppression and preview execution safeguards follow their own bounded windows.

## Replay availability
Replay is available only while FlowRelay still has retained replayable event material and the current operator or agent has authority.


## Do not reconstruct private data
When retained material is gone, do not rebuild raw event bodies from screenshots, chats, tickets, or memory. Use a fresh sender-side resend.


## Operating guidance
Apply the concept through the receipt before changing setup, resending, or replaying.
1. Open the receipt and check whether the source event body is retained, expired, or was not retained.
2. Use replay only while FlowRelay still has retained replayable event material.
3. When replay is unavailable, ask the source system to resend a fresh event instead of reconstructing raw event bodies.
4. Use diagnostics to share redacted receipt and setup facts, not raw retained bodies.
5. Remember that retention is plan-bound and cleanup also expires diagnostics shares, dedupe keys, action-preview records, support rollups, and expired grants.

## Related
- [Retries, replay, and resend](https://docs.flowrelay.app/recover/retries-replay-and-resend.md)
- [Share diagnostics](https://docs.flowrelay.app/recover/diagnostics.md)
- [Read receipts](https://docs.flowrelay.app/operate/receipts.md)

## Safety Boundary
Do not include raw event bodies, endpoint secrets, authentication headers, HMAC values, Shopify tokens, Shopify sessions, database URLs, customer data, merchant incidents, or copied private logs in public examples.