Intermediates

Generation produces intermediate images and videos: canvas composites, filter previews, staging candidates and other temporary files that were never saved to the gallery. The Intermediates section of Settings lists them per project, shows how much space deleting them would reclaim, and deletes them safely. It is also reachable from a project’s actions menu, from the Users page (administrators) and from Data & workspace.

What the page shows

Each row is one of your projects, or Unassigned for intermediates without a known project. Deleted projects’ leftovers appear under Unassigned. A row shows the project’s cover, its Used count (intermediates a cleanup keeps) and its Unused count (intermediates nothing needs any more), with the measured reclaimable size underneath. Sizes are measured in the background after upgrading; the section says so while measurement is still running and never counts an unmeasured file as empty.

Select rows, or Select all, and press Delete. Select all covers every project the current search matches, including projects on other pages; untick a row to leave it out (up to 1,000 rows). A selection that matches more than 10,000 rows is refused; narrow the search. The confirmation explains why kept items are kept: referenced by a saved document, used by queued or running work, or created recently.

Administrators start on their own account. Show everyone expands the view to every account; they can search accounts as well as project names and can open one account from the Users page. Opening the section from a project action shows that project directly, even when it is outside the first results page.

Safe and force deletion

A normal delete removes only safe items. It always keeps:

• anything a pending, waiting or running job produced or uses as an input, including cached images and videos reused from an earlier job and completed child-workflow media until the root workflow finishes;
• anything created in the last 30 minutes, so an upload the browser is about to reference or enqueue is never collected, and cached media for 30 minutes after the job that reused it ends;
• anything the open webv2 editor still references, including unsaved edits and available undo history; the browser refreshes this temporary hold while it is open;
• anything a saved document still names: a project or library workflow (canvas staging candidates, cropped reference images), the legacy editor’s saved canvas and reference images, or a project set aside for repair when project boards were introduced;
• anything that is no longer an intermediate.

The advanced option in the confirmation, also delete items that saved projects or workflows still reference, turns it into a force delete. The confirmation lists the documents it would break (the first 200, with a count of any others); those projects will show missing images and undo may no longer restore them. Confirming acknowledges exactly those documents: a document saved after the check keeps its media, while a document on the list may lose more of its references if it names further items while the deletion runs. A force delete never touches active, browser-held or recent work and cannot be undone; it asks for an acknowledgement and for the word DELETE to be typed. A regular user’s force delete also keeps anything another account’s document names, such as a shared workflow. The same applies when an administrator loses administrator rights while their force delete runs. A force delete that would break more than 10,000 documents is refused; narrow the selection.

Every confirmation is based on a fresh server check that fixes the moment recency is judged at. Files created after the check are never included, and every batch re-checks its targets at the moment of deletion: an intermediate that was promoted, referenced or picked up by a job in the meantime is kept. Items that became unused after the check are collected too, so the deleted count can exceed the estimate.

An open editor refreshes its browser hold every five minutes and when the tab becomes visible again. It releases names removed from the current projects and undo history, and releases the whole hold when the tab closes or you sign out. If the tab crashes instead, the hold expires 15 minutes after its last refresh. Each account holds media for at most eight open editors (tabs) at once; past that, the editor refreshed longest ago stops protecting its media until its next refresh. A single editor holds up to 50,000 images and 50,000 videos. Reopen an unsaved browser-only draft before deleting old intermediates.

Progress and results

Cleanup runs on the server, so you can navigate away while it works. The page reports deleted, kept and failed items separately, along with files whose records are gone but whose bytes could not be removed yet; those are purged on the next server start and are not counted as reclaimed. Reloading the page, or opening the section with no deletion shown, picks up a deletion that is still running. When a deletion stops early or leaves failed items, Delete again repeats the same request, in the same mode; the check runs afresh, so it picks up exactly what remains.

Running deletions live in the server’s memory. If the server restarts while one runs, the section still showing it reports that its status is no longer known; after a reload the interrupted run is simply gone. Either way, refresh the list and delete again if anything remains. The server keeps each account’s last few finished deletions until it restarts.

The server accepts one running deletion per account and at most eight at a time. Wait for one to finish before confirming another delete if a limit is reached. Cleanup is refused while image storage maintenance is active.

Permissions

Action	Regular user	Administrator
Delete a project’s intermediates	Own projects	Any project
Delete an account’s intermediates	Own account	Any account
Delete everyone’s intermediates	No	Yes
Force delete referenced intermediates	Own files that only your own documents name	Any authorized scope

Legacy endpoint

The older DELETE /api/v1/images/intermediates route remains available to administrators. It applies the same safety policy as a normal delete, so it keeps referenced, active and recent images and returns the number of images it deleted. It does not touch videos. GET /api/v1/images/intermediates counts exactly the images that route would delete, so the legacy button settles at zero after it runs.

Limitations

• Canvas uploads made before the server accepted the project they belong to are stored without a project and are never re-associated with it. They are still protected by saved references and browser holds, but they appear under Unassigned.