20. Product Deactivation
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20. Product Deactivation
Verified against: the real ProductStatus enum already confirmed in
[Section 3]/03-product-management/#status—publishing (draft/proposed/published/
rejected), the Sales Channel field confirmed in
[Section 3]/03-product-management/#basic-information, and product-general-section.tsx’s
delete action (source-read directly, exact warning text below).
Mapping the brief’s concepts to what’s real
| Brief concept | Real equivalent |
|---|---|
| Draft | Real — the draft status value ([Section 3]/03-product-management/#status—publishing). Removes the product from the storefront while keeping everything intact |
| Hidden | Not a distinct status. Two real ways to achieve something similar: set Status to draft, or unassign the product from its Sales Channel while leaving it published (a real, separate field — see [Section 3]/03-product-management/#basic-information) |
| Out of stock | Not something staff sets directly. It’s a derived Stock Status, calculated automatically from inventory quantity ([Section 3]/03-product-management/#inventory) — happens on its own once stock hits zero (assuming Manage Inventory is on and Allow Backorders is off) |
| Archived | Not a real status value. Medusa’s actual ProductStatus enum is only draft, proposed, published, rejected — there is no fifth “archived” state. Draft is the closest real equivalent to what the brief means by “archived” |
| Deleted | Real, and genuinely different from all of the above — see below |
Draft/Hidden vs. Deleted — why this distinction matters
Setting a product to Draft (or removing it from a Sales Channel) is fully reversible —
flip it back to published and it reappears exactly as it was, with all its order history,
images, and metadata intact.
WARNING — Delete is real and permanent. A product can be deleted from its detail page (an action in the same menu as Edit). The confirmation dialog’s own wording: “You are about to delete the product {{title}}. This action cannot be undone.”
[TO BE CONFIRMED] — whether deleting a product that has ever appeared in a real order leaves that order’s line items intact, orphaned, or broken was not verified as part of this wiki (this store has no completed real orders to test against yet — see [Section 8]/08-order-management/). Until this is confirmed, do not delete a product that has any order history — use Draft instead, which is unambiguously safe and reversible.
Recommendation
For either of this store’s two real products, or anything sold in the future:
- Temporarily unavailable / discontinuing: set Status to
draft. Reversible, keeps everything. - Genuinely never existed / created by mistake, never ordered: Delete is reasonable — there’s nothing real to lose.
- Anything in between, or any doubt: prefer Draft. There is no “are you sure this has no order history” safeguard on the Delete action itself — that check is on the person clicking it, not the system.
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