Managing universes

A universe has a runtime UUID and a Platform organization linked to it. The runtime owns the team’s sessions and resources; the Platform owns its members, roles, and display information. Preserve that association when adopting, recovering, or retiring a universe.

For the isolation model and shared infrastructure, see Tenant isolation and data protection. For sign-in and membership, see People and roles.

Create a universe

A Platform administrator creates universes under Platform admin → Universes. Creation adds a runtime universe and a Platform organization, with the creator as an Admin member. Universe admins then add existing accounts under Members. Creating a runtime universe directly through the API or server CLI creates only the runtime record; use Adopt to connect it to the Platform.

Keep Platform and runtime records aligned

Creating a universe through the Platform creates the runtime universe and records the association in the Platform database. Because these are separate systems, an interrupted operation or a partial restore can leave one side without the other.

Platform admin → Universes reconciles the configured default runtime inventory. Adopt connects an existing runtime universe to the Platform without replacing its contents. Create in engine creates an empty missing runtime universe. It cannot restore deleted sessions or files. Universes using custom gateway URLs can appear as unchecked in this inventory.

Preserve runtime UUIDs and their Platform mappings during recovery. Secret encryption and workflow identities depend on those UUIDs, so copying records under a newly invented UUID is not a supported tenant migration. See Upgrades and recovery for the full recovery set.

Archive and delete a universe

Archiving changes the universe’s Platform status and hides it from the ordinary switcher. Existing URLs and API requests remain callable, and the runtime has no corresponding archived state. Bots, schedules, channels, and previously admitted work can continue. Archiving is therefore an organization step, not an access-revocation or shutdown mechanism.

Retire the tenant’s running work before permanently deleting its records:

1. Stop new submissions, disable or remove triggers, and stop external clients and connector ingress for the universe. Revoke runtime keys and remove unwanted Platform access.
2. Inspect active sessions, bot activity, channel deliveries, and environment jobs. Let required work finish or cancel it, accounting for effects it already performed. Close retired bots to disable their triggers, remove their schedules, and request controller teardown.
3. Close the universe’s environments and confirm the intended machine cleanup. Provider-owned VMs require provider destruction; bring-your-own machines remain the operator’s responsibility. Retain any files that must survive.
4. Archive the universe in the Platform. A platform administrator can then permanently delete it after the required data has been retained elsewhere.
5. Verify remaining infrastructure artifacts, including Temporal schedules and histories, provider inventory, connector-local state, and object storage.

The runtime purge terminates the session workflows it enumerates, deletes catalogued external blobs, and removes runtime rows through database cascades. It also attempts a best-effort cleanup of the universe’s CAS prefix and evicts the handling process’s cached universe service. The Platform then removes its organization and associated records.

That purge does not enumerate every bot, channel, or environment-job workflow or every schedule; it does not destroy provider VMs, erase retained Temporal histories, remove connector-local authentication files, or broadcast cache eviction to other runtime replicas. Use the cleanup and verification steps above to remove those remaining resources, and retain the records needed to investigate a partial failure.

Access and isolation

The explanation of universe boundaries now lives in Tenant isolation and data protection. Private and shared work explains who can read and control sessions inside a universe.