Export things back out

A catalog you cannot get out of is a trap. export_things copies the bytes behind matching things into a storage resource, and it is the reverse of a sync in every respect that matters.

{
  "name": "export_things",
  "arguments": {
    "destination_id": "...",
    "query": "invoice",
    "kind": "pdf",
    "since": "2024-01-01"
  }
}

destination_id defaults to this tenant’s default storage if you leave it off.

The selector is the search grammar

Same fields, same meaning — one grammar covers a search query, an export’s source, and a rule’s matcher:

Field	Restricts to
query	words to match
kind	one kind
resource_id	things from one resource
folder	a prefix of the locator key, as a folder: 2024/invoices
since / before	when the thing was catalogued

Every argument you leave off widens it

No arguments at all means the whole catalog into this tenant’s default storage. That is the consistent reading of the grammar rather than an accident, but it is worth searching with the same selector first and looking at the count.

Each copy is catalogued

A copy is written as another reference to the thing it came from, not as a new thing. Two consequences:

• A thing already written to the destination is left alone, so re-running an export resumes rather than duplicates.
• The exported copy is findable. It is the same thing, now living in one more place.

It resumes

Like every operation over an unbounded number of things, an export checkpoints through job-iteration. An export interrupted by a deploy carries on at its cursor. Watch it with list_runs and stop it with cancel_run:

{ "name": "list_runs", "arguments": { "kind": "export" } }

Cancelling sets a flag the iteration reads on its next check rather than killing anything — the work stops within a few dozen objects, and whatever was already copied stays copied and catalogued.

Backup and export are the same form

The sync/export family is one shape with the endpoints swapped, and the flag is what separates them:

source	destination	make it a thing	is
Drive	—	✓	ingest — references only
Drive	B2	—	backup
Drive	default storage	✓	ingest + materialize
things matching q	B2	—	export

The catalog is never a destination; cataloguing is a flag. See The four movements.

Deleting is not exporting

Once the bytes are somewhere you control, forgetting the reference and deleting the object are still two different operations — and the default is forget. See Things.