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microagent delete

Last updated: 2026-08-15

microagent delete <name> [<name>...] [--reason <text>] [--yes] [--force] [--state-dir <dir>]

delete removes the workspace record and its on-disk artifacts (rootfs, bundles, state file). The removal is permanent - to shut a workspace down and keep it, use halt instead.

Several names delete in one call, with one confirmation for the whole batch and a result line per workspace. A failure on one workspace does not stop the others, and the exit status reports whether any failed. Slow deletions show a single delayed completed/total counter for the batch. Fast deletions remain quiet; JSON output contains only the typed batch result.

By default, delete asks for confirmation. If the workspace is running, the prompt becomes “Stop and delete it?”. Either --yes or --force skips the prompt; on a running workspace, --yes stops it gracefully before deleting, while --force kills it instead.

Delete is idempotent: deleting a workspace that does not exist (or was already deleted) exits 0, so retried teardown never fails on “already gone”. The output still reports “did not exist; nothing deleted” (JSON: "deleted": false), which makes a typo’d name or an unexpanded shell glob visible. No confirmation is asked in that case.

Delete a workspace (asks for confirmation):

Terminal window
microagent delete research

Delete several at once (one prompt for the batch):

Terminal window
microagent delete research scratch demo

Non-interactive cleanup:

Terminal window
microagent delete research --yes
microagent delete research -y

Force-delete a running workspace:

Terminal window
microagent delete research --force

Lower-level form:

Terminal window
microagent delete agent-1 --state-dir /tmp/microagent

Common flags:

  • --yes / -y - skip the confirmation prompt in scripts; stops a running workspace before deleting
  • --force / -f - also skips the prompt, but kills a running workspace instead of stopping it

The complete set:

Flag Description
--name <name> Workspace name; positional name is also accepted
--id <id> Workspace ID alias for --name
--reason <text> Opaque reason recorded as each lifecycle event’s purpose
--state-dir <dir> State directory holding the workspace record (default ~/.microagent/)
--backend <name> Backend identity override
--supervisor <path> Override the installed host backend supervisor path
--yes, -y Confirm deletion without prompting
--force, -f Skip the prompt and kill a running workspace before deleting

See global flags for --output/--json/--supervisor.

delete exits 0 when every named workspace is removed or was already absent. It exits nonzero when any workspace cannot be removed, or when a running workspace cannot be stopped or killed first. A non-interactive run without --yes or --force that would require confirmation also fails rather than prompting blindly.

  • halt - shut down without removing state (stop is an alias)
  • kill - force-terminate first when needed
  • list - see what’s left