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LLP 0137: Onboarding never asks for retention; the pathway sets the default

Type: Decision Status: Active Systems: Onboarding, CLI, Config Author: Phil / Claude Date: 2026-07-24 Related: LLP 0011, LLP 0013, LLP 0129, LLP 0135 Extended-by: LLP 0183 - the pathway default applies to a machine with no stated window; a reconfigure keeps the window the config already carries.

Amends LLP 0011: the "Cache retention (days)" question is removed from the interactive walkthrough, and the flat default becomes pathway-scoped.

Revised 2026-07-27: the team-side default moved from 30 days to 90. The pathway-scoped structure below is unchanged; only the number widened. A 30-day window turned out to be narrower than the questions people actually ask of the cache (quarter-over-quarter comparisons, "when did this regress", month-boundary rollups), and it forced a round trip to the org server for work the local cache should answer on its own. The base rate of cache growth per day is what bounds this; 90 days stays inside the disk envelope the cache was sized for.

Decision

Onboarding never asks for a cache retention window. The pathway chosen at the fork (LLP 0129) decides the default instead:

  • Join a team: 90 days. The org server holds the durable copy of forwarded history, so the local cache is a working window, not the record; 90 days makes that window wide enough to answer quarter-scale questions locally.
  • Local install: 120 days. Nothing leaves the machine; the local cache is the only copy of history, so it keeps the longest window.
  • A managed machine's scoped re-entry counts as the team side (90 days), same rationale.

The wizard orchestrator passes the local default into the pick phase as retentionDefault; team and scoped runs fall through to the pick phase's DEFAULT_RETENTION_DAYS. The superseded programmatic walkthrough (runPickerWalkthrough), which has no fork, keeps the flat DEFAULT_RETENTION_DAYS value.

Why not ask

Retention was the last free-text question in onboarding, and it asked for a judgment the user has no basis to make on first run (how many days of an as-yet-empty cache to keep). Every other pick already defaults (export defaults to local Parquet, LLP 0011); the window is a config value (query.cache.retention.default_days, LLP 0013) that remains freely editable after the fact, so asking up front bought nothing but friction.

Overrides unchanged

hyp init --retention-days <n> still sets the window explicitly on the non-interactive path (its flag default tracks the team default, now 90), and editing query.cache.retention in the written config remains the post-install knob. Fleet-enforced retention stays deliberately deferred (LLP 0031).