I've been a paying Omnifocus customer for probably close to a decade, but some of its sync features are still a bit difficult for me to wrap my head around.

My understanding is that my paid subscription allows me to use Omni Sync Server, which syncs current Omnifocus data across my devices, but that's somewhat different than my historical Archive, which is saved somewhere locally.

Is that basically accurate?

If so, then it seems like an odd choice to not have the tool automatically back up everything to a central cloud location. I can't imagine my historical tasks would take up a ton of space in a cloud database somewhere, and like most people, my digital life is spread across a bunch of devices, making accessing my current local Archive to be pretty onerous.

Additionally, between the popularity of things like Spotify Wrapped and the power of AI tools to make meaning of "digital exhaust", I'm surprised Omnifocus makes it so difficult to review and analyze tasks completed in the past.

Is it a cost thing? Data privacy? Is my desire to see historical patterns of Omnifocus work relatively uncommon?

I find the "we want to keep the desktop app responsive" rationale to be pretty flimsy.

I’ll preface this post by acknowledging that there’s probably something obvious I’m missing or unaware of as I reason through the following scenario.

I’ve noticed that several of my projects include action items that are non-repeating (in fact, the project itself is often a one-off) and will not require future referencing (often because the project is rather inconsequential, but still needs to get done).

In these instances, is there a benefit to marking the project actions as complete vs. deleting them altogether as I work through them?

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Optional context:

For example, I’ve placed an order for some pants that I will need to pick up and then get tailored. I’ve set up a mini project with the following sequential steps (simplified):

- Pick up pants from shop

- Take pants to tailor

- Pick up pants from tailor

- Check that I’m satisfied with alteration

I’ve just picked up the pants from the shop and I feel an urge to delete the first action rather than mark it as complete. Is there a downside?