Pachyderm Data Removal — Three Use Cases, One Guide
Pachyderm
How-to guide
Procedural documentation as UX — decision logic before procedures, explicit irreversibility warnings, designed to prevent the costly mistake before it happens.
The situation
Three related but distinct data removal operations exist in Pachyderm — commit deletion, squash commits, and surgical file removal — each with different semantics, scope, and irreversibility. Users conflate them and pick the wrong one.
The task
Build a how-to guide that gives users the decision logic to identify the right operation before any command is run.
What I did
Opened with explicit decision guidance mapping use cases to operations. Handled each operation with worked examples and precise irreversibility warnings. Designed the squash-delete diagram showing sequential before/after commit chain states for both operations side by side — the effect of each command unambiguous.
What happened
Documentation that functions as UX — the decision logic surfaces the right operation before any command is run, making the costly irreversible mistake harder to reach.
Procedural documentation designDecision logic framingRisk communicationUX-driven information architecture