Cleanup

When users delete something in Marginalia - a book, a story part, a lorebook, an inference provider - it disappears from their lists, but stays in the database. That makes deleting safe and keeps references working (a book still knows the provider that wrote its parts). Until then users can restore their deleted objects from the Trash tab. Cleanup removes such deleted data for good, to keep the database small.

Running a cleanup

1. Open the Cleanup tab of the admin page and click Analyze. Nothing is changed yet.
2. Check the result (see below).
3. Click Run Cleanup and confirm n objects will be permanently removed.

Cleanup covers the data of all users.

Files are not removed. Cleanup deletes entries from the database only; the files of deleted resources (pictures of the parts) stay in the data folder of their owner.

Seeing what is deleted

Trash below the tables lists the deleted objects of all users, one row per object (open it to load the table), so you can see what a cleanup would remove and restore what somebody asked you to bring back. It is the same table as the Trash tab, including the filters by user and type and the Extended Content link.

Reading the analysis

The first table has one row per kind of data:

Column
Entity	The kind of data: Manuscript (books), ChatMessage (story parts), Lorebook, LorebookEntry, AI (inference providers), Protocol, Summary, Tag, TagRelation, User...
Deleted	How many are deleted.
To purge	How many will be removed by Run Cleanup, including data that belongs to deleted objects.
Blocked	Deleted, but still in use, so they are kept.

Deleted objects still in use lists the blocked objects with the name and Referenced by - what still uses them.

What is removed

Cleanup removes deleted objects that nothing alive uses any more, together with the data that belongs only to them:

Deleted	Removed with it
a book	all its story parts, summaries and tag links
a lorebook	its entries and tag links; other lorebooks no longer include it as a sub lorebook
a story part	the part (its children were already moved to its parent) and its summary
an inference provider or protocol	cleared from the users' defaults in Settings
a tag	its links to books and entries
a user	everything they owned: books (with their story parts and summaries), lorebooks, inference providers, protocols, tags and settings

What is kept

A deleted object is blocked - kept - while something alive still uses it:

Blocked	Because	To unblock
a deleted inference provider or protocol	a book still uses it as its model or protocol	select another one in the book's About tab, or delete the book
a deleted lorebook (with its entries)	a book still uses it	select another lorebook in the book, or clear it
a deleted story part	it is the last part of a book's active branch	switch the book to another branch, or delete the book
a deleted user	something of another user still uses their data (a book using their inference provider or lorebook)	change or delete the other user's book

Run Analyze again after unblocking.

Reference model

Reference Model at the bottom lists every reference between the kinds of data and its policy - useful when you want to understand why something is blocked:

Policy	Meaning
Blocks purge	A deleted target is kept while a live object refers to it.
Purged with target	The referring object belongs to the target and is removed with it (entries with their lorebook).
Owns target	The target belongs to the referring object (a summary to its part).
Cleared on purge	The reference is removed when the target is purged (sub lorebooks, default model).

Extensions can take part in cleanup with their own rules.