Deleting a Design

Permanently delete a design you own, and understand how deleting differs from unpublishing a design or removing it from a workspace.
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Deleting a design removes it permanently. There is no trash, no recycle bin, and no undo: the design record is destroyed, and every workspace it was assigned to loses it at the same time. Before you delete, check that what you actually want is not one of the two softer actions described under Related actions that are not deletion.

Deleting a design requires the Delete a design permission, and beyond that you must own the design. A user who holds the permission but is not the owner is refused - only the design’s owner, or a provider administrator, can delete it.

If the Delete action is grayed out for you, your role does not carry the permission. See Default Permissions for which roles hold it by default, and Keychains for how an organization administrator can grant it.

  1. Go to My Designs in Layer5 Cloud, or open the design’s detail page.
  2. Choose Delete from the design’s actions.
  3. A confirmation dialog opens, naming the design. Click Delete to confirm, or dismiss the dialog to cancel.

Once the deletion succeeds you are returned to My Designs and the design is gone from the list.

The table view of My Designs supports bulk deletion.

  1. Switch to table view.
  2. Select the rows you want to delete using the checkboxes.
  3. Choose Delete from the bulk actions.
  4. Confirm in the dialog, which names how many designs will be deleted.

Each design in the selection is deleted independently. If one of them fails - for example because you do not own it - the rest still go through, so check the list afterwards rather than assuming the whole batch succeeded.

  • The design itself, including its design file, name, and metadata.
  • Its assignment to every workspace it belonged to. Collaborators who reached the design through a shared workspace lose access to it, because there is nothing left to reach.

Deleting a design does not affect infrastructure. If the design was deployed, the deployed resources stay running in your clusters. Undeploy the design first if you want its resources removed as well - once the design is deleted, you no longer have the definition Meshery would need in order to undeploy it.

Two nearby actions are frequently mistaken for deletion. Neither destroys the design.

ActionWhat it doesWhen to use it
UnpublishRemoves a design from the public catalog. The design remains in your account as a private design.You want to withdraw a design from public view but keep it.
Remove from workspaceUnassigns the design from one workspace. The design and its other workspace assignments are untouched.You want to tidy a workspace, not lose the design.

Removing a design from a workspace is labelled Delete in the workspace’s design table, and its confirmation dialog says “from workspace name”. That phrase is the thing to check: if the dialog names a workspace, you are unassigning; if it does not, you are deleting the design outright.

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Last modified August 28, 2026: docs(catalog): address review feedback on catalog management docs (40a9cf836b7)