How do you clean up orphaned media without deleting active work?

How do you clean up orphaned media without deleting active work?

Failed uploads and interrupted jobs can leave unused objects. Cleanup should distinguish abandoned artifacts from files still needed by running or completed projects.

Define lifecycle rules

Track pending, ready, failed, and retired artifacts with job and attempt references. Choose an age threshold appropriate to the longest legitimate processing path. Keep current result references and active attempts out of cleanup candidates. Do not infer abandonment from object age alone.

Make cleanup recoverable

Recheck state before deletion and account for a job completing while cleanup runs. Record what was selected and what actually succeeded. If storage deletion and database updates occur separately, support retry and reconciliation. Begin with a report of candidates in a development environment to verify the rules. Test an old but still-referenced result alongside an abandoned upload so the distinction is explicit.