Archiving and deleting

Most of the time you don’t want a chapter gone, you want it out of the way. A cut scene, a character you wrote out, a subplot you might come back to. Archiving is for that, and it destroys nothing. Deleting is a separate, deliberate act you have to ask for twice.

Archiving

Archiving a chapter or an Atlas entry takes it out of your working view. It stops appearing in the chapter rail, in casts and connection lists, in counts, and on the relationship map. Manuscript exports leave archived chapters out.

Nothing is thrown away to achieve that. Every link the archived thing had is kept exactly as it was, it simply stops being shown while the thing is shelved. An archived character still knows which chapters they appeared in and who they were connected to.

To see what you have archived, turn on Show archived, in Outline for chapters, in the Atlas for entries.

Restoring

Restore an archived chapter or entry and it comes back whole, with every connection it had before. That is the point of archiving rather than deleting: there is no partial recovery to piece together, because nothing was taken apart.

Deleting for good

Sometimes you really do want a thing gone, a test chapter, a duplicate entry, a false start. Archived chapters and archived Atlas entries offer Delete permanently.

1. Archive it first

   Only archived items can be deleted. Nothing that is live in your manuscript can be destroyed in a single step, which is the whole safety margin.

2. Find Delete permanently

   For a chapter, open it from Outline with Show archived on, and look in the Details tab of the side panel, beside Restore. For an Atlas entry, turn on Show archived in the Atlas, open the entry, and choose Delete permanently from its More menu.

3. Read what it will remove

   The confirm spells out exactly what goes with it, counted from your actual project, and what survives.

What a delete takes with it

Deleting an archived chapter removes:

• the chapter and its text
• its saved versions
• its Atlas links and chapter-scoped continuity states
• its comments, continuity findings, and release slots

Story beats, ideas and revision tasks that pointed at it survive, simply unassigned from any chapter, so the planning work you did around it is not collateral damage.

Deleting an archived Atlas entry removes:

• the entry itself
• its chapter links and continuity states
• its connections to other entities, and their recorded history
• its beat links and continuity findings

Other entities are untouched, only the connection between them and the deleted entry goes. Ideas you promoted into that entry survive too.

Deleting a whole book

A whole project can be deleted too, and it works the same way: archive it from the Library first, then choose Delete permanently from its card, or from the project’s Details view.

The confirm is heavier than the others, because the loss is. Deleting a chapter leaves the book standing; deleting a book leaves nothing. So it asks you to type the book’s title, it counts up everything that goes with it, and it offers you a backup on the spot.

Everything inside the book goes with it: every chapter and saved version, the whole Atlas, arcs and beats, release slots, ideas, revision tasks, comments, and the cover. Nothing survives, and there is nothing to restore, so take a backup first if you might want it again.