Retention

# 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.
- Open the receipt and check whether the source event body is retained, expired, or was not retained.
- Use replay only while FlowRelay still has retained replayable event material.
- When replay is unavailable, ask the source system to resend a fresh event instead of reconstructing raw event bodies.
- Use diagnostics to share redacted receipt and setup facts, not raw retained bodies.
- Remember that retention is plan-bound: cleanup also removes diagnostics shares, dedupe keys, replay-preview records, support summaries, and grants that have already expired.

## 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)
- [Permissions and data access](https://docs.flowrelay.app/setup/permissions-and-data-access.md)

## Safety Boundary
Do not share endpoint secrets, authentication headers, HMAC values, tokens, raw event bodies, customer records, Shopify sessions, store passwords, or database URLs in public examples.