Archives are the fourth of four top-level categories in Tiago Forte's 📝PARA Method, holding anything from the other three categories that is no longer active but may be worth saving for future reference.
Forte Labs lists three kinds of archived material: projects that were completed or put on hold, areas that are no longer active or relevant, and resources a person is no longer interested in. Its overview of 📝Building a Second Brain (BASB) defines the category as inactive items from the other three categories.
PARA arranges information in four top-level folders, 📝Projects, 📝Areas, 📝Resources and Archives. When a new item fits no project, area or resource, the BASB overview suggests it is probably best archived or not saved at all. For a person starting fresh, the same overview recommends moving all existing files into an Archive folder labeled with the current date, which it likens to a time capsule; nothing is deleted, and any file can be pulled back out when needed.
In an April 2026 Forte Labs post on PARA and artificial intelligence, Forte writes that the Archives category is designed to facilitate forgetting without deleting anything in case it becomes useful again later, and that archives become valuable over time. His example is moving a finished vacation project into archives, which reminds him to send recommendations to someone planning a trip there.