# Tableflow

This API provides programmatic management of Tableflow tables.

#### Table Lifecycle

* **Creation:** Managed automatically by the Tableflow Control Plane. Tables are provisioned when topics matching the pipeline configuration are discovered.
* **Management:** Use these endpoints to list active tables, inspect metadata, or delete tables.
* **Recreation:** Deleting a table via the API removes its metadata. If the topic remains in the configuration, Tableflow will provision a new table with a fresh UUID on the next discovery cycle.

{% hint style="warning" %}
**Data Retention:** Deleting a table via API only removes the metadata tracked by WarpStream control plane. It does not delete physical data files from your object storage.
{% endhint %}