Debug Data Retention

Coder Agents automatically cleans up old chat debug data to manage database growth. Debug data includes persisted debug runs and their associated debug steps.

This setting is independent from conversation data retention, which only purges archived conversations and orphaned files.

How it works

A background process removes debug runs older than the configured retention period. When a debug run is deleted, its debug steps are deleted via cascade.

The retention clock uses the debug run's updated_at value, which reflects the last write to the debug run. It does not use the chat archive time. If a debug run remains in progress for an unusually long period, such as after broken finalization, it can still be purged once its updated_at value is older than the cutoff.

Configuration

Navigate to the Agents page, open Settings, and select the Lifecycle tab to configure chat debug data retention. The default is 30 days. Set the value to 0 to disable debug data retention entirely. The maximum value is 3650 days.

Use the experimental admin API to read or update the value:

Interaction with conversation retention

Conversation retention and debug data retention are orthogonal controls:

Deleting a chat still deletes its debug data immediately via cascade, regardless of the debug retention window. Unarchiving a chat does not restore debug data that was already purged.