Archive, Recovery, Updates
Keep the workspace tidy, restore useful history, and understand how Jean updates and cleans up local state.
Jean is built for long-running work, which means it also needs a clean way to retire work without losing the useful parts.
Archive vs delete
When you close sessions or worktrees, Jean can:
- archive them
- delete them permanently
The right choice depends on how often you revisit old work.
Archiving is a good default when:
- you return to older tasks often
- you want session history without active clutter
- you use Jean as a durable project memory
Deletion is a good default when:
- you prefer a minimal workspace
- you already have everything you need in git and PR history
Retention and restore
Jean tracks archive state and lets you:
- open the archive view
- restore the most recently archived item
- keep archived items for a configured number of days
That makes cleanup reversible without making the active view noisy.
Unread and orphaned work
Jean also helps with cleanup around session state:
- unread sessions can be surfaced as a queue
- orphaned session data can be cleaned up from maintenance commands
This matters when repos, worktrees, and sessions do not all disappear in the same order.
Recovery
Because Jean stores important local state, recovery paths matter.
The app keeps patterns for:
- emergency data recovery
- crash-state persistence
- restoring archived work
- keeping session metadata tied to the correct workspace
Updates
Jean uses an app-style update flow instead of making you reinstall by hand every time.
In practice that means:
- automatic update checks after launch
- a manual "check for updates" path
- download and install flow through the app
- restart when the update is ready
A practical maintenance routine
Every so often:
- archive finished work
- restore anything you still need
- remove true dead ends
- check for updates
- clean orphaned sessions if the workspace has had a lot of churn