Exporting Containers

You can export any container you have access to, even ones in the trash. Wire builds a portable archive in the background and emails you a download link when it’s ready. The link works for 7 days.

What’s in the archive

The export captures everything you put into the container, exactly as you put it.

Included	Description
Original files	Every file you uploaded, in its original format and bytes
Entries	Records you and your agents wrote (via wire_write, the dashboard, or the REST API), in JSONL form
Container metadata	Name, description, visibility, creation time
Manifest	A manifest.json with provenance for each file (uploader, upload time, archive path)

What’s not in the archive

The archive intentionally leaves out anything Wire derives from your source data. These are recomputed automatically if you ever import the archive into a fresh Wire container.

Excluded	Why
Knowledge graph relationships	Re-derived by analysis from the same source
Canonical entity extractions	Re-derived by analysis from the same source
Vector embeddings	Coupled to the embedding model version, not portable

Archive layout

container-export-<jobId>.zip
├── manifest.json     # Container metadata + per-file provenance
├── entries.jsonl     # One JSON object per line, your and your agents' entries
└── files/
    └── <fileId>/
        └── <originalFilename>

How to export a container

1. Open the container in the Wire dashboard
2. Go to the Settings tab
3. Find the Export this container section
4. Click Export Container and confirm

You’ll see a “Snapshot of this container as of …” panel appear once the archive is ready, with a Download archive button. The same link is emailed to you.

Note

Only one export per container can run at a time. If you click Export while one is in progress, the dashboard will tell you and you can wait for it to finish (typically less than a minute for a few-MB container, longer for very large ones).

Cooldown

If you’ve completed an export of this container in the last hour, requesting another one will return the same archive instead of rebuilding it. Wire treats your most recent archive as still fresh and saves the work. After an hour, a new request triggers a fresh build.

This applies whether the original was kicked off by you, a teammate, or via automation. The dashboard’s Last export panel surfaces whichever archive is current, so you’ll see the same one whether it’s brand new or reused.

Snapshot semantics

The archive captures a single point in time. Anything written or uploaded after the export was kicked off won’t be in the file. If your container is changing rapidly and you want a more recent capture, just request a new export.

Soft-deleted containers

You can still export a container that’s in the trash, anytime within the 14-day recovery window. This is useful when you’ve moved a container to trash and decide you want a permanent local copy of its contents before it’s permanently deleted.

Permissions

Anyone with at least viewer access to a container can export it. The export covers the same data that viewer-level access already lets that person read in the dashboard or via MCP, so it doesn’t expand who can see what.

Download links

The signed download link works for 7 days from when the export completes. If the link expires, you can request a new export from the same Settings page. Wire holds onto the archive in storage during those 7 days, then cleans it up automatically.