website/versioned_docs/version-1.0.0/cli-reference/prune.md
Generated from bd help --doc prune
Permanently delete closed non-ephemeral beads and their associated data.
Use this to trim closed regular beads (tasks, features, bugs, chores, etc.) that are no longer useful. The common case is a long-lived repo where closed work has piled up and is bloating auto-export or slowing queries.
Requires --older-than or --pattern. The flag is a safety gate — without
it, a muscle-memory --force could wipe every closed bead in the repo.
Use --pattern '*' if you really do want to sweep everything closed.
Deletes: issues, dependencies, labels, events, and comments for matching beads. Skips: pinned beads (protected), open/in-progress beads, and ephemeral beads.
To delete closed ephemeral beads (wisps, transient molecules) use
bd purge instead.
For full Dolt storage reclaim after deleting many rows, follow with bd flatten
so history can be collapsed and old chunks can be garbage-collected.
EXAMPLES: bd prune --older-than 30d # Preview closed beads >30d old bd prune --older-than 30d --force # Delete them bd prune --older-than 90d --dry-run # Detailed preview with stats bd prune --pattern "" --force # Delete all closed regular beads bd prune --pattern "gm-temp-" --force # Scope to a pattern
bd prune [flags]
Flags:
--dry-run Preview what would be pruned with stats
-f, --force Actually prune (without this, shows preview)
--older-than string Only prune beads closed more than N ago (e.g., 30d, 2w, 60)
--pattern string Only prune beads matching ID glob pattern (e.g., 'gm-old-*')