---
title: Trash
description: The soft-delete recovery view for retention-trashed records — chat threads, documents, prompts, workflow runs — before they are permanently deleted at the end of the grace window. Admins and Owners read this when someone needs a deleted artefact back.
---

Trash is the recovery surface for the rows retention has soft-deleted but not yet hard-deleted. When a chat thread, a document, a prompt template, or a workflow run exceeds its retention window, it moves here for the configured grace window before the next cleanup pass removes it for good. Admins and Owners read this page when a member asks for a deleted artefact back, when an automation deleted the wrong thing, or when an audit needs to know whether a row is still recoverable.

## A worked restore

To restore a chat history thread, open **Settings > Governance > Trash** and switch the **Category** filter to **Chat history**. Each row carries the type, the name, the owner, the status, and when it was trashed. Click **Restore** on the row, confirm in the dialog, and the row returns to its source list — chat threads reappear in the conversation inbox, documents in the knowledge base, prompts in the prompt library. Restoring a retention-expired row requires typing `restore` to confirm and is audited as an override of the retention policy.

## The two statuses

**Trashed** is the normal soft-delete state. The row's retention window elapsed, it moved to trash, and the grace window is still ticking. Restore returns the row to its source list with no policy override.

**Expired** is the second state — the grace window ran out and the row is queued for permanent deletion at the next cleanup. Restore is still possible but is an override: the dialog asks you to type `restore` and the audit log records the override with your name.

## The categories

Trash holds rows from many categories. The category filter switches the view per tab:

- Chat history (threads)
- Documents
- Temporary files
- Prompt templates
- Message feedback
- Customers
- Vendors
- External conversations
- Message metadata
- Workflow runs
- Workflow trigger logs
- Usage ledger
- Audit logs
- Chat filter events
- Memory audit

Each category honours its own retention window and its own grace window — set on the retention policy in [policies and limits](/platform/admin/governance/policies-and-limits).

## Legal hold interaction

Rows under legal hold do not appear in trash — the hold pins them out of reach of every retention step. When you try to delete a held row from its source list, Tale refuses with the **Delete is blocked by an active legal hold** message. Release the hold to let retention sweep the row through the trash window the way other categories flow.

## The grace window

The grace window is configurable per category on the retention policy. A grace of zero skips trash entirely — the cleanup pass hard-deletes the row immediately when retention triggers. A grace above zero keeps the row in trash for that many days and surfaces it here for the Admin window where restore is still cheap.

## Where this fits

Trash is the second chance retention gives every category before the cleanup pass removes a row for good. It pairs with [policies and limits](/platform/admin/governance/policies-and-limits) — the retention page sets the windows; this page is the recovery view those windows feed. The companion is [legal hold](/platform/admin/governance/legal-hold), which is the only mechanism that beats retention before a row ever lands in trash.
