Preservation & Sharing
Understand retained capture evidence, optional screenshot and PDF preservation, point-in-time public snapshots, and asset-aware backups.
Arivu keeps private research evidence and deliberate public publishing as separate workflows. Normal capture remains useful without a browser helper or a public link.
What Normal Capture Keeps
A link follows the ordinary capture pipeline. Its reader shows capture-attempt history and retained source evidence with provenance and quality details when available. Reader pages also save scroll progress so you can resume later.
Source evidence is distinct from generated summaries and other derived material. A partial source may correctly have a short summary or none at all.
Optional Screenshot and PDF Preservation
An operator can configure an optional browser helper to add screenshot or PDF artifacts after successful direct capture. It is disabled by default. Configuration covers whether preservation is enabled, which artifact types are allowed, execution timeout, and bounded file and total sizes.
These artifacts live beside the database in the private asset store and require an authenticated owner to read them. Preservation is bounded and optional, not a promise to reproduce every page or bypass a publisher’s access controls.
Create a Public Snapshot
From a bookmark’s Share disclosure, create an item-only secret link and copy its unrepeatable token when shown. Settings lists active public links and lets you revoke them. A snapshot can have an expiry.
The public copy contains selected public bookmark fields and sanitized reader content. It excludes owner details, private tags, notes, annotations, backlinks, graph connections, and Insights. Authenticated share APIs and local automation can deliberately replace membership, delete a share, or include selected screenshot or PDF artifacts. The bookmark disclosure itself does not select artifacts. Raw or self-contained HTML artifacts are not publicly served.
Private Changes Do Not Rewrite the Copy
The public item is copied at publication time. Editing, recapturing, or deleting the private bookmark does not change or silently break that copy. An authenticated update can deliberately replace published membership under the same secret link. Revocation or expiry stops public access.
Each public share also has a bounded RSS endpoint for its newest published items. This public feed is different from private RSS and Atom subscriptions, which bring accepted entries into your capture pipeline.
Backup Implications
Installer-managed backups copy a consistent SQLite snapshot together with the adjacent asset store except staging and write a versioned size/hash manifest. Restore verifies a present manifest and treats the database and assets as a pair. Do not copy only a live SQLite file when retained artifacts matter.
Full JSON is the portable account-level export and restore format. It is not a replacement for an asset-aware host backup. See Import and Export and Self-Hosting Arivu.
Boundaries
Public snapshots are intentional, revocable publishing. They are not social networking, collaborative editing, a live workspace mirror, or an access-control substitute. Anyone with an active secret link can read its public snapshot, so publish only evidence you are prepared to disclose.