---
title: "Deleting an agent"
description: "What goes, what stays, and what happens to your hiy.ai address."
source: https://hiy.ai/docs/deleting-an-agent
---

# Deleting an agent

You can delete any one of your agents on its own — your public twin included,
and each of your [Support and Team Agents](/docs/your-twins). **Deleting one
never touches the others**, and it never touches your account.

## Where the button is

Two places, and both name the agent you are about to delete:

- **On the agent itself** — open it, go to **Profile**, and the danger zone at
  the bottom reads *Delete <your agent's name>*.
- **In Settings → Data & privacy** — one row per agent, so you can clear
  several without opening each one.

Both do exactly the same thing. There is no "delete my twin" button any more:
every control names which agent it means.

## What it takes

Before you confirm, hiy shows you what this particular agent holds:

- **Its conversations.** Every chat it has had, and the messages in them.
- **Its leads.** Everyone who left their details with it.
- **Its answer index.** What it had learned to answer from.
- **Its sources**, split in two — see below.

## Sources: what goes, and what stays

This is the part worth reading before you press anything.

A source that **only this agent uses** is deleted with it. Nothing else drew on
it, so there is nothing to keep.

A source that **another agent also uses** stays. It moves into your
[Knowledge Hub](/docs/knowledge-library) and the other agents carry on drawing
on it exactly as before — deleting one agent must never quietly take material
out of another. The confirmation lists those sources by name and says which
agents keep them.

A source you had **already removed** goes with the agent, whichever agents were
subscribed to it. You had asked for it to go; deleting the agent it lived on
does not bring it back.

## Your hiy.ai address is kept for you, for 90 days

An agent that has been shared or embedded lives at an address other people have
linked to. When you delete the agent, **hiy holds that address for your
account for 90 days**: nobody else can claim `hiy.ai/<name>` in that time, and
you can use it again yourself whenever you like — for a new agent, or for the
same one rebuilt. Typing it into the create screen just works; it is only
other people who are turned away.

After 90 days the hold lapses on its own and the name goes back into
circulation, first come first served. That is deliberate: a hold that never
ended would take a name out of use for ever, including after the account that
gave it up no longer exists.

### Seeing and releasing what you hold

**Settings → Data &amp; privacy → Addresses you're holding** lists every
address you have on hold and how many days each one has left, with a
**Release** beside it.

Releasing is immediate and it is not a way of getting the name back: it makes
the address **available to anyone**, and whoever claims it first gets it — you,
if you are quick, or a stranger. Anything still linking to it could end up
somewhere else. If you are not sure, do nothing: the hold ends by itself.

## It is immediate, and it is final

There is no grace period and nothing kept in the background. To make that hard
to do by accident, the confirmation asks you to **type the agent's own name** —
not the word "delete", which would only prove you meant to delete *something*.

Once it is gone we cannot restore it, and neither can you. If you want a copy
of anything first, take one from **Settings → Data &amp; privacy → Export my
data** before you delete.

## Deleting your whole account

That is a different control, in **Settings → Account**, and it removes every
agent, every source and the account itself. See
[Privacy](/privacy) for what we keep and for how long.

Your addresses are held the same way, and for the same reason: deleting your
account puts every `hiy.ai/<name>` it was publishing at on hold for 90 days, so
a link or an embed pointing at one cannot be picked up by somebody else the
same afternoon. With the account gone there is nobody left to claim them back,
so those holds simply lapse and the names return to circulation.