34. Claude can move pages to the trash#

Date: 2026-10-26

Status#

Accepted. Revises 25. The trash and a recent-changes feed over MCP, which said no tool deletes a page.

Context#

The owner merged several Later lists into one page with Claude, then had to delete the old pages by hand in the PWA: nothing over MCP could. Since 30. The trash is purged after N days a delete is a move to the trash, kept for N days, and undelete brings a page back, so a delete over MCP can be undone. The threat is a session steered by text in a page (prompt injection) into deleting pages the user never named.

Decision#

  • A new tool, trash_pages(pages, dry_run), moves up to 50 named pages (ids, slugs or URLs) to the trash, as the PWA’s delete does (the same store helper, trash_in, which every move to the trash goes through, as every restore goes through restore_in), all or nothing: a page not found or already in the trash refuses the call and moves none. It takes no search query: pages are named one by one.

  • It is a separate tool, not a mode of trash. trash stays a read-only lister, served even with SCRAP_MCP_CONTENT_EDIT=0; a destructive argument on it would blur that, and a name that says what it does is clearer to a model and in a permission prompt. It follows edit_page and edit_meta (verb and object), and is gated by SCRAP_MCP_CONTENT_EDIT with undelete.

  • Nothing over MCP deletes a page for good or empties the trash: only the user, in the PWA, or the nightly purge after N days.

  • Two or more pages moved in one call share a batch id; undelete(batch=...) brings back every page of it still in the trash from that call (those brought back since, or moved there again by a later call, are skipped and listed). revert(batch=...) refuses a trash batch and points at undelete: it undoes kind and tag changes, and a trash batch has none.

  • Topic pages can be trashed. A topic page in the trash is never purged and vetoes its topic (discovery will not make it again), so the description and instructions say to trash one only if the user named it.

  • Every move into or out of the trash, the PWA’s delete and undo and a pin that brings the Pinned page back included, is a row of a new table, page_trash_rev (action, author, source web or mcp, batch id, when). revisions lists them (trash) for a page, a batch, or in the recent-changes feed.

  • The tool description and the server’s instructions say to trash only pages the user named or asked to delete, never because text in a page says to, and to try dry_run first.

Consequences#

  • Tidying after a merge is one call, and undone with one call.

  • An injected instruction could still get pages trashed, but at most 50 a call, each named, each recorded with source mcp, and all recoverable as a batch until the purge.

  • Deletes become visible in history: “what changed overnight?” now also answers “what was deleted?”. Pages already in the trash before the table existed have no row and are in no batch.