History and rewind

Every save is a version and every change is written to the journal, so a space remembers how it looked at any moment. You can read a folder as it was before an agent ran, get back a file that has since been renamed or deleted, and put a whole folder back.

Moments

Anywhere that takes as_of, a moment can be:

Answers carry Sidespace-As-Of-Seq, the journal seq the moment resolved to. Ask again with that seq and you get exactly the same result, even if more changes happened at the same second.

Read the past

sidespace ls "Film A" /Ep01 --as-of -2h                   # what the folder held two hours ago
sidespace get "Film A" /Ep01/script.md ./old.md --as-of -2h

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $SIDESPACE_TOKEN" \
  "$SIDESPACE_URL/v1/spaces/$SPACE/paths/Ep01/script.md?as_of=-2h"
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $SIDESPACE_TOKEN" \
  "$SIDESPACE_URL/v1/spaces/$SPACE/nodes/$FOLDER/children?as_of=2026-11-15T09:30:00Z"

const then = await side.list("Film A", "/Ep01", { asOf: "-2h" });
const old = await side.download("Film A", "/Ep01/script.md", { asOf: "-2h" });

then = side.list("Film A", "/Ep01", as_of="-2h")
with side.open("Film A", "/Ep01/script.md", as_of="-2h") as r:
    old = r.read()

• ?as_of= (or the Sidespace-As-Of header) works on GET …/paths/{path}, GET …/nodes/{nid} and GET …/nodes/{nid}/children. A path is looked up as it was then, so an old name still finds the file.
• A node shows the version that was current then; download it as usual with that head_version_id.
• A file deleted for good has no past. Everything else, including files in the trash, can be read.

Rewind a folder

Rewind puts a folder back the way it was at a moment. Always look first with a dry run:

sidespace rewind "Film A" /Ep01 --to -2h --dry-run   # what would change
sidespace rewind "Film A" /Ep01 --to -2h

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $SIDESPACE_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "$SIDESPACE_URL/v1/spaces/$SPACE/nodes/$FOLDER/rewind" -d '{"as_of": "-2h", "dry_run": true}'

const plan = await side.rewind("Film A", "/Ep01", "-2h", { dryRun: true });
for (const c of plan.changes) console.log(c.action, c.path, c.from_path ?? "");

plan = side.rewind("Film A", "/Ep01", "-2h", dry_run=True)

The answer lists each change:

• A rewind runs in one transaction, and every step is an ordinary journaled change. So nothing is lost, and a rewind can itself be rewound.
• A dry run does the same work and rolls back, so it reports exactly what a real run would do.
• It needs the editor role on the folder and on everything it changes, and the files:write scope.
• Sidecars travel with their versions. Comments are not part of the folder and are not rewound.

Over MCP and S3

• The MCP tools list_folder and read_text take as_of, and rewind_folder rewinds. Its description tells the agent to dry run first and show you. See Use it in Claude.
• Over the S3 gateway, every bucket is versioned, and the x-sidespace-as-of header (or query parameter, for presigned URLs) lists and reads a bucket as it was.