Automatic cleanup

Builds and deploys leave data behind. The janitor removes what nothing uses, in small bounded passes, and records what it did. Open it from Settings, Advanced, Automatic cleanup. It starts in preview mode: scheduled passes list what they would do and remove nothing. Turn off “Preview only” in the policy to let it act.

What it cleans

Stage	Removes	Never touches
Stopped containers	Stopped containers no app or database still wants	Any container the reconciler may restart
Dangling images	Untagged images only	Tagged images, which include every rollback target
Build cache	Idle cache past the age limit, and all idle cache when the cache is over its budget or disk is short	Cache an in-flight build holds
Orphaned volumes	Named volumes no app uses, after a quarantine	Database volumes (`db-*`), mounted volumes, volumes a live service or upgrade snapshot references
Old deploy attempts	Failed, superseded, canceled and held attempts past retention	Succeeded attempts, pinned rollback targets, each app’s newest attempts

Containers and images are cleaned only when free space falls below the disk budget (default 15%). Build cache, volumes and attempts are time driven and run every pass. Pipeline artifacts already expire on their own retention (see pipelines), so they are not repeated here.

Preview and quarantine

Preview (janitor run --dry-run, or the Preview button) lists every candidate and changes nothing.
An orphaned volume is first quarantined: the pass records when it was first seen. It is deleted only when the quarantine (default 14 days) has ended, “Delete volumes after quarantine” is on, and it is still unused. At most 5 volumes are deleted per pass. A volume that becomes referenced again leaves quarantine.

Run now and the disk alert

Run now does a forced pass: containers and images are cleaned even above the budget. When free space is below budget the page shows a warning with a “Clean up now” button, and the disk space fix in the Fixes list runs the same pass. Every pass that changes something is stored with the bytes it reclaimed.

CLI

levelrail-cli janitor status
levelrail-cli janitor run --dry-run
levelrail-cli janitor run --if-needed
levelrail-cli janitor policy --dry-run=false --delete-orphan-volumes=true

The MCP tool get_janitor returns the state and, with preview, a dry run.

API

GET /api/v1/system/janitor, GET /api/v1/system/janitor/runs, PUT /api/v1/system/janitor/policy and POST /api/v1/system/janitor/run?dry_run=true&force=true. Changing the policy and running need a root token.

Limits

It cleans the control plane’s own node. Other nodes keep using the per-node build center and image tools.
Disk free is measured on the control plane data directory.

Last modified on October 19, 2026

Essentials

Deploying

Networking and multi-node

Databases and storage

CI/CD and automation

Security and access

Scale and operations

AI and agents

Templates and catalog

Migrating from other platforms

Beta and experimental

What it cleans

Preview and quarantine

Run now and the disk alert

CLI

API

Limits

​What it cleans

​Preview and quarantine

​Run now and the disk alert

​CLI

​API

​Limits

What it cleans

Preview and quarantine

Run now and the disk alert

CLI

API

Limits