Artifact Delete Policy

Status

Implemented: wf artifact delete <artifact_id> <version> --confirm deletes unreferenced artifact versions and rejects versions referenced by deployments.

This is the current design contract for artifact deletion. It is separate from wf draft delete because artifact deletion is not only CLI plumbing.

Current State

Draft workspace deletion already exists in wf_api and can be exposed safely through CLI/RPC.
Deployment deletion already exists and is stored through WorkflowArtifactStore.delete_deployment.
Artifact deletion exists as a store/API/RPC/CLI operation for one artifact version at a time.
Deployments live in the artifact store area and can reference a specific (artifact_id, version).

This means wf artifact delete <artifact_id> <version> enforces store-level policy, not just CLI confirmation.

Required Safety Rule

Artifact deletion must not remove an artifact version while any deployment references that artifact version.

Deletion rejects referenced artifacts with structured output like:

{
  "deleted": false,
  "artifact_id": "smoke_artifact_20260609",
  "version": 1,
  "blocked_by_deployments": ["smoke_deploy_20260609"]
}

The exact response can be adjusted to match existing API payload style, but it must include the blocking deployment ids.

Non-Goals

Do not cascade-delete deployments.
Do not delete runs.
Do not delete draft workspaces that created the artifact.
Do not add soft-delete/tombstones unless a store migration spec exists.
Do not silently ignore missing referenced deployments.

Future Cascade Policy

If cascade deletion is added later, make it explicit and noisy:

wf artifact delete smoke_artifact_20260609 1 --cascade-deployments --confirm

The non-cascade path must remain the default.

Implementation Shape

The implemented shape is store primitives first, then API, then transport, then CLI:

WorkflowArtifactStore gains an artifact-version delete method.
WorkflowArtifactStore gains a helper to find deployments referencing (artifact_id, version), or the delete method returns the blockers itself.
wf_api exposes delete_artifact(artifact_id, version) and rejects when blockers exist.
JSON-RPC and RpcWorkflowApiClient expose the same operation.
CLI adds wf artifact delete <artifact_id> <version> --confirm.

Test Requirements

Artifact deletion should keep tests for:

Deleting an unreferenced artifact version succeeds.
Deleting a missing artifact version is idempotent only if the existing artifact store style already treats deletes that way; otherwise it should return a clear not-found error.
Deleting an artifact version referenced by one deployment is blocked and returns that deployment id.
Deleting an artifact version referenced by multiple deployments returns all blocking deployment ids.
Deleting one artifact version does not delete other versions of the same artifact id.
CLI requires --confirm.

Relationship To Deployment Delete

wf deploy delete <deployment_id> removes a deployment record. It does not remove the artifact that deployment referenced.

wf artifact delete <artifact_id> <version> removes an artifact version only after proving no deployment references it.

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