An agent reads a customer contract, produces a renewal brief, and stores enough history to investigate a mistake. During procurement, the buyer asks how long the data is retained. The honest answer takes more than one number: the original contract, temporary copies, final brief, action history, and reusable notes live in different places for different reasons.

Inventory the copies and their purposes. Decide which information the business retains, revises, or expires, then verify how every system on the path implements that decision. One service's short retention setting does not describe the whole workflow.

A developer question about batch retention shows why: buyers need to distinguish processing a request from storing files associated with it. Use the provider’s current data controls documentation for endpoint-specific and contractual questions, not an old forum answer.

Separate evidence from reusable knowledge#

History helps investigate a disputed action; a reviewed method tells the next agent how to perform a job. A preserved failed attempt does not make its conclusions reliable, and deleting a temporary document does not require deleting a useful general method.

A renewal workflow can preserve an approver's rejection of a discount while the next task relies on the current discount policy. The rejected proposal belongs in decision history under the agreed retention rules and stays out of other accounts' default price.

Have a business owner justify each retained category without the phrase “for future AI.” Concrete reasons are resolving customer disputes, reproducing an accepted calculation, or maintaining a tested procedure; vague future value does not justify keeping every intermediate copy.

Data category	Purpose	Owner’s decision
Source document	Authoritative business information	Which source system keeps the original?
Temporary extract	Complete the current task	When does this copy expire?
Final artifact	Deliver accepted work	Who can revise or archive it?
Action history	Explain decisions and results	Which fields and period are necessary?
Reviewed method	Reuse on later tasks	Who can approve, supersede, or retire it?
Backup copy	Restore service	How does deletion reach the backup lifecycle?

Trace one document through the purchase#

Have the seller follow a synthetic contract through ingestion, model processing, tool execution, artifact storage, export, and deletion. Use invented data so the exercise creates no sensitive copy.

At each step, record the processor, region if relevant, access roles, retention setting, and deletion mechanism. Include customer-operated components, browser downloads, external observability tools, and the model provider; a company machine can keep a downloaded file after the hosted application deletes its copy.

Then ask what happens when the contract changes: a new version should not leave an older extracted clause acting as current guidance. Retention answers how long the old material exists; reliance answers whether future work can use it, and it matters most when the system reuses company knowledge.

Test deletion without promising instant erasure#

Choose a sample task and request deletion using the documented process. Verify the active application, your exported copies, and the stated treatment of backups and logs. Some systems retain limited metadata or expire backups on a schedule; record that behavior and the agreement instead of demanding an unsupported instant-deletion promise.

A litigation hold or another company requirement changes the ordinary schedule. The legal or records team decides the obligation; the procurement exercise shows whether the workflow can carry it out. The platform leader identifies copies and mechanisms and invents no universal retention period.

If a service cannot separate a necessary action record from an unnecessary sensitive payload, decide whether redaction, narrower collection, or a different workflow resolves the conflict. Extending retention for everything only defers the problem.

Put the agreement beside the configuration#

Resolve retention and data-flow terms for a purchase on Deixic’s procurement page; the trust page lists the control questions to bring. Use evidence and activity to decide what an operator needs to reconstruct a task.

The deliverable is a small inventory with one owner per category, a purpose, a period or event that ends retention, and evidence that the mechanism works. Revisit it when a tool, model provider, or output type joins the workflow.