Strategy Guide for Expiring Pastes

Strategy Guide for Expiring Pastes

Expiration is a proactive cleanup mechanism. Instead of relying on people to remember deletions, expiring pastes self-retire. Here is how to apply them effectively in FragBin.

1. Why Expiration Matters

• Lowers attack surface
• Removes outdated information
• Shrinks storage footprint
• Encourages deliberate retention choices

2. Recommended Durations

Use Case	Suggested Lifetime
Debug stack trace	1–3 days
CI build log snippet	24 hours
Temporary credentials note	A few hours
Release checklist	1–2 weeks

3. Avoid Over-Expiring Critical Knowledge

Not all content should vanish-architecture notes or onboarding guides may deserve permanence. Use expirations where ephemerality is natural.

4. Operational Workflow

1. Author selects a sensible duration
2. System stores expiry timestamp
3. Background cleanup purges expired content
4. Optional: soft-delete grace period for recovery

5. Automating Policy

Track common durations. If most pastes of a type expire in 24h, suggest that automatically.

6. Observability Tie-In

Surface metrics: % of expired vs permanent. This helps adjust defaults to reduce clutter.

7. Conclusion

Expiring pastes are a small feature with outsized impact on hygiene and security. Thoughtful defaults inside FragBin guide users toward safer sharing.