What makes it different

Every default setting is a cautious one. The logic that decides a removal won't change unless a test catches it.

TV seasons, judged like a viewer would

Reaper decides per season and won't remove a whole series in one action. If you reap a show, it fans out into its seasons.

Tip

It follows where each person actually is. Someone part-way through a season keeps that season. The moment they finish it, the hold moves to the next one.

That hold covers one season or the other, but not both. It only holds both when Reaper cannot read the episode counts. These two details matter in a real library:

• It steps over gaps. If you finish season 3 but only have seasons 3 and 5 on disk, it holds 5.
• It anchors on the most recent play instead of the highest season number. This protects re-watchers and people watching out of order.

Keeping a cushion in front of a binge

By default the hold is one season: where each viewer is now. Set "also keep N seasons ahead of where they are" and Reaper holds that many more in front of every viewer, so someone on season 1 with a cushion of 2 keeps seasons 1, 2 and 3. The cushion counts seasons that are on disk, so it steps over gaps the same way the hold does.

Note

The cushion starts at 0. Raise it if your users binge faster than you scan, so Reaper is never deleting the season someone reaches tomorrow.

The partway-through hold lasts 180 days from that person's last play of the show. Set that window to 0 to hold indefinitely.

Rule	Default
Always keep the newest seasons	2, counting only seasons with files
Always keep a show's first season	on, and it means the earliest on disk
Never remove specials	on
Keep seasons someone is partway through	on, 180 days
Also keep seasons ahead of where they are	0, no cushion
Never remove a season with episodes missing	on, so a removal never races a download
Ask me first when a removal looks unusual	on

The "Ask me first" row earns its place. Reaper stops and asks you if a keep rule would remove a season more people watched than the one it's keeping. It protects the newest season of a currently airing show outright, and there's no switch to turn that off.

Caution

A short watch history holds everything. Where your history does not reach as far back as your library, Reaper cannot tell who is partway through, so it holds every prunable season. Automatic TV pruning stays inert until the history catches up. If you are waiting for TV pruning to start, that is why.

It explains the keeps

Every candidate carries the protections that were checked and did not fire, with the real numbers: "Only 2 people watched it here in the last year (it takes 3 to keep on that alone)." Every protection reports, even once the answer is settled.

This panel shows you what spared a title, what it cleared, and what Reaper could not check and is leaving to you.

Safety you do not configure

These are always on, with no setting to get wrong:

• The test file. The smallest measured item goes first, alone, and is verified before anything else is touched. If it misbehaves, the whole run halts.
• A phrase bound to the plan. You type REAP 7 SOULS 214 GB, recomputed on the server, so a stale tab and muscle memory both fail.
• A practice run that walks every interlock and sends nothing.
• Unknown sizes never go first. An item Reaper could not measure can never be the test item, and it is also held back from the run entirely. The unknown-size allowance on Policy is the one setting that lets any of them through, and it starts at 0.
• The scheduler never deletes. Scans are automatic; removals are not.

What protects a title

• Your lists. Go to Settings, Lists to set them up. You can use a Plex collection or watchlist, a Sonarr or Radarr tag, or an IMDb list. Each list protects your files through a keep rule on Policy. A list won't protect anything until you give it one, and you decide if it keeps every title outright or only leans that way. Two lists come ready to use with a keep-everything rule, "Titles you've tagged" (the reaper-keep tag) and the IMDb Top 250.
• Well-rated titles, using a vote floor so a few votes won't protect a title forever.

Things you turn on

Off until you ask for them, so nothing surprises you:

• The Leaving Soon shelf is a Plex collection and label that lets your users rescue a title by watching it. You need to have deletion armed to use this, unless you turn on "Update while read-only".
• Discord announces what is leaving soon.
• HD/4K library mapping helps Reaper tell two copies of one title apart. Reaper keeps any unmapped duplicates.

Before you commit to a change

The simulator re-decides your last scan under a draft policy without calling your services. You can move a number and watch the count, the space, and the named titles change.

If an edit changes what a scan would gather, Reaper stops showing numbers and asks you for a fresh scan so you don't rely on a wrong figure.