Clear away finished sessions

You can archive finished sessions and delete the working copies and branches you no longer need. Whatever you delete goes to the trash first, so deleting too much can be undone.

How it works

What you do	What happens
Archive a session	It leaves the list with its conversation kept, and can be restored at any time
Delete it from the archive list	It moves to the trash, and can be restored from Clean up’s “Trash (restore)”
Tidy up in bulk with Clean up	Stopped sessions, and working copies and branches judged safe, are cleared away
Delete a working copy	The working copy and the sessions in it are cleared in one go
Lock something against deletion	Neither cleanup nor automatic tidying removes it

You can also ask the Fleet Operator to do the same survey and tidy-up from chat.

What stays and what goes

The only thing that goes on its own is an archived session’s scratch folder. A conversation is gone for good only when you delete it permanently from the trash.

	Archive	Delete (to the trash)	Delete permanently from the trash
The row in the list	Moves to the archive list	Moves to the trash	Gone
A claude conversation	Stays	Goes into the trash	Gone
Other kinds’ conversations	Stay	Stay in the agent’s own store; the trash holds the row only	The row is gone (the conversation files stay in the agent’s own store)
Scratch folder (`~/.af-work/<session name>`)	Removed 7 days after archiving	Removed at once (only a move’s handover file goes into the trash)	Gone
Highlights in the conversation, answer translations, handoff proposals	Stay	Removed (a restore does not bring them back)	Gone
The working copy (worktree)	Stays	Stays	Stays

Archiving or deleting a running session stops it first
Working copies are removed only by deleting a working copy or by Clean up ②
An archived or deleted session’s tabs close on their own. When you tidied up from another tab, another device or Clean up, a notice says “Closed the tab for “…” because the session was archived or deleted”. Tabs of files and plans opened from that session stay

Archive and restore

Clear an AI session out of the list with “Archive (remove from the list)” in its ⋯ menu.

Archived sessions are listed behind the “Open archive (restore)” icon in the Repositories heading.

Button	What it does
“Restore”	Brings it back to the everyday list
“Restore all”	Brings back every one whose folder still exists
“Delete (moved to trash)”	Moves it to the trash
“Delete old ones”	Moves everything archived 30 or more days ago to the trash

A session left stopped for 7 days moves to the archive on its own (Stop and resume a session)
Nothing leaves the archive on its own, except the scratch folder (what agents use as $AF_WORK_DIR), which is removed 7 days after archiving
Restore within 7 days and the scratch folder is kept. One already removed is created afresh at the next launch
While a session is locked, its scratch folder is kept. To free the space sooner, delete it from See your machine and its usage

A throwaway shell / SSM is not archived: “Delete” in its ⋯ menu moves it to the trash.

Tidy up in bulk (cleanup)

Press “Open cleanup (survey & tidy)” (the trash icon) in the Repositories heading to open the “Clean up” window. It is split into two stages so that the riskier things come last.

The "Clean up" window. The "Candidates" tab lists ① Tidy sessions (Tidy all) and ② Delete working copies & branches (Delete all safe), each row with its safety and reason

Stage	Button	What it does
① Tidy sessions	“Tidy all”	Archives stopped AI sessions and moves shell / SSM to the trash
② Delete working copies & branches	“Delete all safe”	Removes only the working copies and branches judged “Safe”
Cache of deleted sessions	“Delete all”	Removes the files pasted or attached into, and the images codex looked at in, sessions that are deleted and not in the trash

To go row by row, tick the rows and press “Clean up selected”. “Select all safe” ticks every safe row at once.

Every candidate carries a safety rating and a reason.

Safety	Meaning
Safe	Merged and clean, and so on: nothing is lost by removing it
Review	A stopped session, a clean but unmerged worktree, and the like. Look before you decide
Keep	Running, uncommitted or unpushed, or locked against deletion. Cleanup leaves it alone

When every pull request of a stopped session is finished and at least one is merged, the reason says “PRs merged” (as last seen)
To clear a Keep, stop it or push first
Archived sessions are not cleanup candidates

Restore from the trash

The “Trash (restore)” tab of the Clean up window lists the sessions, branches and worktrees you deleted.

Button	What it does
“Restore”	Puts it back
“Delete permanently”	Makes it unrecoverable and frees the space
“Delete permanently: older than 30 days”	Deletes everything older than 30 days permanently, in one go

The trash never empties on its own. Its size is also shown in ⚙ Settings → “Machine”
If a restore stopped part way, “Restore” again finishes it. Until then it cannot be deleted permanently

When you delete a worktree

Deleting a worktree goes through the trash too.

Just before the delete, it records the commit, the branch and the uncommitted changes (untracked files included). The recorded commit is protected from git’s garbage collection
“Restore” recreates the worktree at the same path with those changes, and puts the sessions that delete archived back in the list. The changes all come back unstaged
When it cannot come back as it was (the branch moved after the delete, or another working copy has it checked out), the Recreate working copy dialog opens instead. It brings it back on a new branch
Of the sessions in it, stopped AI sessions go to the archive and shell / SSM to the trash. The archived ones cannot resume until the working copy is recreated
The worktree is not deleted if the record cannot be written (a full disk, for example), or if it holds a repository git does not track (a clone inside it)

Some things do not come back:

Ignored files (build output, .env and so on)
Which changes were staged. A new file that was staged comes back as an untracked file

Delete one job’s working copies

Clean up surveys the whole workspace. To clear just one finished job (a parent worktree and the worktrees of the child sessions it started), right-click the working copy’s row and choose “Delete the working copy”.

The copies the left pane nests under that row are listed, so archiving the sessions and deleting the working copies happen in one go. Only the local working copies are removed: history and the remote stay.

Only rows that lose nothing are ticked for you (already in the parent, nothing uncommitted, nobody working in them). A row with uncommitted or unmerged work stays empty, and ticking it is the “delete it anyway” confirmation
For a row with a running session, tick “Stop the running sessions first (N)” to stop them before the delete. A turn in flight is cut off
“Delete the merged branches too (N)” also removes the throwaway temp/… branches. The trash can restore them
Adding “Delete the branch on the remote (origin) too” removes it on origin as well. That one cannot be undone
A branch that is not in the parent’s history cannot be deleted from here
A row locked against deletion cannot be ticked. Remove the lock first

Lock something against deletion

A lock marks something that must not go away. Use it for the conversation you will need at the end of the quarter, or a worktree you have not finished with.

A session: “Lock against deletion” in its ⋯ menu. The row carries the badge “Locked against deletion (skipped by cleanup, and stays in this list)”
A working copy: right-click its row and choose “Lock against deletion”

A locked item is never swept up by cleanup, or by the automatic archiving of stopped sessions. A working copy that holds a locked session cannot be deleted: rather than quietly working around you, it tells you to unlock first. To remove the lock, choose “Unlock (allow deletion)” in the same menu.

When it goes wrong

A “Keep” row cannot be cleared

It is running, or has uncommitted or unpushed changes. Stop the session or push the changes, then survey again. To delete it anyway, use “Delete the working copy” on the working copy’s row and tick that row.

“Locked session inside” stops a worktree delete

A session in it is locked against deletion. Choose “Unlock (allow deletion)” in that session’s ⋯ menu, then delete.

“Delete permanently” is refused

A restore of that archive stopped part way. “Restore” it again, then delete it.

Stop and resume a session
See your machine and its usage: free up space on the home disk