Account, export and deletion

Your data is yours. You can take it with you, and you can make it disappear. Read the second half slowly: some of these buttons don’t come with an undo.

Before you start

• Settings › Preferences, Notifications, Account and Billing are personal and open to everyone. Preferences is in the account menu (your name, bottom of the sidebar); the other three sit beside it in the Personal group. Or type any of them into ⌘K / Ctrl+K.
• Exporting a workspace needs an Admin or the Owner. Deleting a workspace needs the Owner.
• Deleting a workspace or your account, and changing your sign-in methods, need a sign-in from the last 10 minutes. If yours is older, Hydrant asks you to sign in again with a method your account has (Sign in with GitHub again or Sign in again with an email code) and brings you back to the same confirmation.

Steps

Your account

Settings › Account opens on your name and photo, then how you sign in. Change your name with the pencil beside it whenever you like. An account that signs in with GitHub starts with its GitHub name and keeps following it until you change it once in Hydrant.

With GitHub among your sign-in methods, Hydrant shows your GitHub photo unless you upload your own. Without it, you get the account icon until you add one. Press Upload photo, choose Fit whole image or Fill square, then press Save avatar. Remove uploaded avatar puts your GitHub photo, or the account icon, back.

Use my Gravatar brings in your Gravatar (opens in a new tab) photo, if you have one. Hydrant’s server asks Gravatar with a hash of your email address and keeps its own copy, so no page loads anything from Gravatar. Check the preview, then press Save avatar.

Sign-in methods

One account can sign in with GitHub, with a six-digit code sent to its email address, or both. Either way you land in the same account, with the same workspaces, agents and plan. Hydrant never stores a password for you. Sign-in methods, under your name and photo, lists both and which ones are connected.

• Add email codes. Press Add email code, then Send code. The code goes to the address on your account, which can’t be changed here. Type it and press Confirm. From then on, Continue with email on the sign-in page works for you.
• Add GitHub. Press Connect GitHub and sign in to GitHub. It has to be a GitHub account that doesn’t already belong to another Hydrant account. Connecting a repository in Settings › GitHub needs GitHub among your methods.
• Remove one. Press Remove beside it and confirm. You can’t remove your only way in; add another method first, or delete the account.

Adding or removing a method needs a sign-in from the last 10 minutes, and Hydrant emails your address each time one changes.

If your account signs in with GitHub only and someone asks for a code for your address, Hydrant emails you a note instead of a code and changes nothing.

Your plan lives in Settings › Billing (see Plans and billing). The Account page also holds Privacy, where Share product analytics turns usage analytics for your account on or off across devices. It never includes issue content.

Your preferences

Settings › Preferences is short. Each row says whether the choice lives in This browser or follows you to Every device:

• Appearance: light, system or dark, in this browser. System follows your device.
• Layout: List or Board, saved on your account. Every issue list, including a project’s Issues, opens that way on every device, unless a saved view was saved with its own layout or you switched that list by hand. See Views, filters and saved views.
• Sidebar counts: the numbers beside views, in this browser, across workspaces.
• Activity ticker: the one line of what teammates and agents just did in the top bar, saved on your account. Off removes it everywhere. See the top bar.
• Activity in the sidebar: the rail’s activity rows (Last hour, Today, 7 days, 30 days), saved on your account. Off means they aren’t fetched, not just hidden.
• Celebrations: the confetti when a project completes or you accept your agent’s first handoff in a new workspace, the brief highlight when a milestone lands, and the stamp landing when you clear a pile on Sign-off, in this browser. Off means off.
• Timezone: Automatic or a city you pick, saved on your account. A chosen zone sets times, new snoozes and when emails arrive on every device. Automatic shows each device’s own clock, and emails follow wherever you last opened Hydrant. Existing snoozes keep their time. Cycles and the planning calendar keep the workspace’s own clock. See Snooze.

Export a workspace

1. Open Settings › General and scroll to Data.
2. Under Export workspace, press Request export.
3. Hydrant builds the archive in the background and shows “Preparing your export…” with the time you asked. The page checks for you; you can leave and come back.
4. When it’s ready, press Download export. The link shows the archive’s size and stays up for 7 days, until the date under Available until.

You don’t have to wait on the page. When the export finishes, Hydrant emails you once: Your workspace export is ready with its size and expiry, or Your workspace export didn’t finish with the reason. The button in the email opens this section of Settings; you sign in first if you aren’t already, and only Owners and Admins can download. The email never carries the archive or a direct download link.

The download is a .tar.gz holding:

• manifest.json, which describes the archive, counts what it holds and lists every image with an authenticated download link. Images are listed, not bundled. The archive is built while your workspace keeps working, so something changed during the export can appear as it was before or after the change.
• tables/, one folder of JSON Lines files per table (read a table’s files in name order): issues, comments, activity, relationships, labels, views, projects, milestones, cycles, Playbook, Library, workflow and identity settings, and their history.
• markdown/, one Markdown file per issue, named by issue number.
• people.jsonl, with each member’s display name and role.

Left out on purpose: email addresses, invitations, agent keys and connections, email delivery records, personal views, notifications, ownership offers and deletion history.

A workspace can have one export in progress at a time and one request an hour; a failed export doesn’t use up the hour. An agent with write access, connected by an Admin or the Owner, can request the same archive with request_workspace_export, then poll get_workspace_export_status with the returned exportId (omit it only to read the latest job). An agent’s request sends no email to anyone; the agent polls instead.

Delete a workspace

Only the Owner can, from Settings › General › Danger zone.

1. Press Delete workspace….
2. Type the workspace’s exact name. Exact name, exact spelling.
3. Press Schedule deletion.

What happens the moment you confirm

• The workspace leaves everyone’s list. Nobody can open it, including you, every Admin and every Member.
• Agent keys and connections stop working.
• A pending ownership offer is canceled. Pending invitations can’t be accepted.
• Nobody is emailed. Your members just lose access.

You get seven days of regret. To take it back, open All workspaces, find it in the strip at the top, and press Cancel deletion. No re-typing, no fresh sign-in. The workspace comes back with its content, members and settings. Anything that expired in the meantime, like an invitation, stays expired.

After seven days it’s gone

When the window closes, Hydrant permanently removes the workspace’s issues, comments, projects, cycles, Playbook, uploaded images, agent keys and invitations, for everyone. Once the purge has started the row reads “Deletion in progress. It can no longer be canceled.” Encrypted backups keep a copy for up to about five weeks; there is no immediate erasure. Your other workspaces and your account stay.

Export first if you might want any of it back. A workspace scheduled for deletion stops counting toward your owned-workspace limit straight away.

Delete your account

Settings › Account › Danger zone › Delete account…. Two things must be true first:

• You own no workspaces. Transfer ownership of each one (see Members and invitations), or delete it and wait for its purge to finish. A workspace still in its seven-day window counts as owned.
• You have no live Solo Pro subscription. Cancel it with Manage billing first. A canceled subscription keeps counting until its paid period runs out.

Then type delete my account (case doesn’t matter) and press Delete my account.

Immediate. No cooling-off period, no undo.

• Every session ends, everywhere you’re signed in.
• You leave every workspace you belong to. Your agent keys and connections are revoked.
• Your name and email are replaced, your photo is removed, and your sign-in methods, personal views and policy acceptances are deleted. Pending invitations to your email are declined. If the account ever started the Solo Pro trial, Hydrant keeps a keyed hash of its email address so the same address can’t start another one.
• Your comments and other contributions stay in their workspaces, attributed to “Deleted account”.
• Encrypted backups taken before the deletion still contain your account until they expire.

There’s no personal data export. If you need something from a workspace, ask its Owner or an Admin to export it before you go.

How long Trash keeps things

A trashed issue sits in the Trash view for 30 days. Restore it any time before then and it comes back with its status and blocking. After 30 days, Hydrant permanently removes it along with everything attached to it.

What you should see

• After requesting an export: “Preparing your export…”, then a Download export link with its size.
• When it ends: one email to the person who asked from the browser, ready or didn’t finish.
• After scheduling deletion: you land on All workspaces, where the Owner sees the workspace in the strip at the top with “Deletes” and the date. Hover the date for the exact time.
• After canceling: “… is back. Nothing was deleted.”
• After deleting your account: you’re signed out on the public home page.

If it goes sideways

• “Workspace export is not available yet.” Exports are switched off right now. Try later, or email bots@hydrant.dev.
• “Workspace export is limited to 1 export per hour.” The message says how long to wait. Wait that long.
• “This export did not finish after three attempts…” The workspace is probably too big for one run. Email bots@hydrant.dev with the workspace name for a manual export.
• “This export has expired. Request a new export.” Downloads last seven days. Request another.
• No export email arrived. Check spam for mail from bots@hydrant.dev. It goes only to whoever pressed Request export, only while they’re still an Owner or Admin, and not for exports an agent requested. A ready email isn’t sent once the export has expired, and a failure email isn’t sent more than a day late. Settings always shows the latest export either way.
• The email’s button shows a newer export. Settings shows only the latest export. If someone requested another since, the earlier archive can’t be reached from Settings; download the latest one, or request a new export.
• “Only the Owner can delete this workspace.” Exactly what it says. Ask the Owner, or ask them to transfer ownership to you.
• “You still own …” Account deletion is blocked by the workspaces listed. Transfer or delete them first.
• “Cancel your subscription in the billing portal first.” Use Manage billing, then wait for the paid period to end.
• “No victory lap yet. The result is unconfirmed.” The connection dropped. Press Retry same request. It sends the same request, so nothing happens twice.
• “That’s your only way in.” You tried to remove your last sign-in method. Add another first, or delete the account.
• “That GitHub account already belongs to another Hydrant account. Nothing changed.” Connect a different GitHub account, or sign in with that one to use the account it already belongs to.
• You deleted the wrong workspace. If it’s within seven days, Cancel deletion on All workspaces. After that, it’s gone.