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#1646 Make model output retention fields optional with sensible defaults

Opened by michael · 8/14/2026

Usability experience

While authoring a custom model output, I had to stop and understand the distinction between lifetime and garbageCollection, locate the documentation, compare existing models, and resolve what values were valid.

I spent about 15 minutes on this. For this model, the retention policy was not an important domain decision and had no bearing on the behavior I was trying to model.

This is not a bug report. The current fields and validation work as documented. This is my opinion about the authoring experience: these required fields add friction and boilerplate to the common case.

Proposal

Make both fields optional on model resource and file output specifications, with defaults of:

lifetime: "infinite"
garbageCollection: 25

Authors who have a meaningful retention requirement could continue to override either value explicitly.

Why these defaults

  • Infinite lifetime prevents useful model evidence from disappearing unexpectedly.
  • Retaining 25 versions provides bounded history without requiring every model author to design a retention policy.
  • The defaults match the convention already working well across the models I am authoring.
  • Optional fields allow retention policy to become a deliberate decision only when the domain warrants one.

Tradeoff

Requiring the fields does force authors to notice data retention. I understand that motivation. In practice, however, it made a routine output declaration require a decision that did not matter for the model and distracted from the meaningful contract.

Relevant documentation: https://swamp-club.com/manual/reference/data#garbage-collection-policy

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8/14/2026, 12:52:25 PM

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