Trash & recovery

Nothing in BEAM disappears in one step. Deleted items go to trash and can be restored; the workspace snapshots itself locally every half hour; undo reverts the last change. Permanent removal always takes a second, explicit action.

What a destructive command asks of you

Eleven commands in this manual remove something. Since A3 (#1249) they all behave
the same way, because they all run through the same code:

1. Preview. BEAM reads your workspace and lists exactly what will go — counts
   and names, up to five of each kind then "… and N more". Nothing is estimated
   and nothing is described by category; if the command will take four memories
   as well as a project, the four memories are named.
2. Confirm. Six of the eleven take a plain y. The other five ask you to
   type a short code BEAM mints for that one proposal — reply y, BEAM shows you
   the code, you type it back. Those five are the ones nothing in BEAM can undo.
   Anything else you type cancels, and nothing runs on a stray reply.
3. Receipt. BEAM reads your workspace again and reports what is actually
   gone — not what it set out to remove. If some of it did not go, the receipt
   names both halves. If none of it went, it says so instead of claiming success.

A command that removes more than one kind of thing tells you about each kind
separately, because the answers can differ: delete project puts the project
and its tasks in the trash and removes the matched memories for good, so it
prints a line for each — and, because one of its groups is permanent, it asks
for the typed code rather than a y whenever it matched any memories.

sync force is destructive too, and it is deliberately not in this table: it
replaces the cloud copy with this device's rather than removing anything, so
there is no list of things to preview and nothing on this device to read back
afterwards. It keeps its own confirm and its own receipt.

trash

Aliases: none
Purpose: List trashed items.
Syntax:

>trash

Flags: none
Examples:

>trash

See also: restore, purge, empty

restore

Aliases: none
Purpose: Restore items from trash.
Syntax:

>restore #ID
>restore all

Flags: none
Examples:

>restore #17
>restore all

See also: trash, purge

purge

Aliases: none
Purpose: Permanently remove trashed items.
Syntax:

>purge #ID
>purge all

Flags: none
Examples:

>purge #17

See also: trash, empty

Permanent, and it asks for a typed code rather than a y: BEAM keeps no copy of
a purged item and nothing in the app brings one back. Before it asks, it lists
what it found — for purge all broken down per kind, so "41 items" is never the
whole answer, and for purge <item> naming which task, list, project or doc your
words matched, since the match is a substring and takes the first hit. If any of
them are docs, their share links stop working and cannot be reissued; the preview
says so. Afterwards BEAM re-reads the trash and reports what actually went.

empty

Aliases: none
Purpose: Empty the trash.
Syntax:

>empty trash

Flags: none
Examples:

>empty trash

See also: trash, purge

The same command as purge all, and the same ceremony: a per-kind list of what
is in the trash, a typed code, then a receipt read back from the trash itself.

undo

Aliases: none
Purpose: Revert the last change.
Syntax:

>undo

Flags: none
Examples:

>undo

See also: trash, snapshots

Shows how many more steps of undo remain.

snapshots

Aliases: snapshot
Purpose: List, restore, or clear local data snapshots.
Syntax:

>snapshots
>snapshots restore <slot>
>snapshots restore pre
>snapshots clear

Flags: none
Examples:

>snapshots
>snapshots restore 2
>snapshots restore pre

See also: sync, undo

BEAM keeps five rolling snapshots of your workspace on this device, taken at load, at unlock, and every 30 minutes. They are stored wherever your workspace itself is stored — IndexedDB in the browser, or on disk in the desktop app — and snapshots names which. Each slot shows its age and task counts. restore saves the current state first and then loads the slot; snapshots restore pre puts that saved state back, so a restore you did not mean is undoable. clear deletes every backup to reclaim storage — it asks first, lists every slot it will delete, and tells you whether new backups will actually be taken afterwards. It takes a plain y rather than a typed code, and the reason is worth stating: nothing you wrote is removed. Your live data is untouched and sync pull restores from the cloud copy, so the backups are the only thing that goes. Afterwards BEAM re-lists the ring and reports which slots are actually gone.

clear

Aliases: cls, sweep
Purpose: Clear the terminal screen, or hide tasks from the active view.
Syntax:

>clear
>clear <task>
>clear done
>clear all done

Flags: none
Examples:

>clear
>clear done

See also: unclear, show

Bare clear just clears the screen. Clearing tasks hides them without deleting — nothing is removed, show cleared lists them and unclear <ref> brings one back. The bulk forms show you which completed tasks they found, by name, and ask for a y first; afterwards BEAM re-reads the workspace and reports how many are actually cleared.

unclear

Aliases: none
Purpose: Bring a cleared task back into view.
Syntax:

>unclear #N
>unclear <title>

Flags: none
Examples:

>unclear #17

See also: clear, show

show

Aliases: none
Purpose: List cleared tasks in the current project.
Syntax:

>show cleared

Flags: none
Examples:

>show cleared

See also: clear, unclear