Retention Policies, Legal Hold and WORM Controls

Understand what can change and what must stay frozen. Policies define retention, legal holds freeze specific records, and evaluation tells you if a mutation is allowed.

Defensible retention controls for immutable records and legal workflows.

Retention and legal hold controls are what make permanent storage operationally safe in regulated environments. They let teams prove they can preserve evidence without blocking normal platform operations.

Value

Policy-driven retention windows

Define enforceable retention windows with status-governed lifecycle transitions and explicit ownership metadata.

Legal hold enforcement before mutation

Active holds prevent operational mutations that would reduce evidence visibility, while preserving immutable Arweave records.

Pre-action governance evaluation

Evaluate policy matches, hold state, WORM controls, and immutable metadata requirements before execution.

How it works

Create policy class

Define retention duration, WORM enforcement, immutable metadata, and optional matcher conditions.

Attach legal hold scope

Choose what to freeze using one or more selectors: record ID (`txId`), file name, profile ID, or chain ID.

Evaluate before mutation

Call /retention/evaluate prior to hide/delete workflows to compute policy and hold posture.

Block or allow operation

If legal hold is active, mutation is blocked; otherwise retention controls continue to govern workflow behavior.

Use cases

Government record preservation

Apply policy classes and legal holds to public-sector evidence records before archival mutations.

Legal discovery workflows

Freeze high-risk artifacts by transaction and chain context while maintaining verifiable lifecycle logs.

Finance and audit operations

Enforce WORM retention windows for accounting and compliance records with pre-action governance checks.

Security guarantees

Policy lifecycle controls

Retention policies are lifecycle-managed (`draft`, `active`, `archived`) with explicit transition constraints.

Hold-first enforcement

Active legal holds are evaluated before mutating operations, preventing accidental evidence suppression.

Governance auditability

Evaluation and hold workflows generate event-ready state snapshots for compliance and oversight reporting.

For operators

• Model retention policy classes per workflow, jurisdiction, and profile context instead of one global TTL.
• Attach legal holds by txId, file name, profile, or chain context and release only with auditable reason fields.
• Use governance evaluation in mutation workflows to block risky actions before they execute.

For buyers

• Critical for legal, government, healthcare, and finance buyers that require explicit retention controls for procurement.
• Improves audit readiness by showing policy state, hold lifecycle, and enforcement behavior in one module.
• Creates a stronger enterprise posture by pairing immutability with governance, not just storage permanence.

Does retention governance delete immutable Arweave content?

No. Governance controls workflow behavior and metadata policy state. Immutable Arweave content remains permanent.

When should we call retention evaluation?

Before any action that changes visibility or state, such as hide, delete, archive, or status transitions.

Can legal holds be scoped beyond txId?

Yes. You can scope holds by txId, fileName, profileId, or chainId. Use whichever identifier your team already has in that workflow.