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Overview

Choosing a strategy is the one decision in a sync that matters most, so it’s worth understanding before you click anything. Sync compares the source and the target as they are right now. It has no memory of who changed what, or when — so it can’t guess your intent. Your strategy choice is the intent. Every difference Sync finds falls into one of three buckets, and each strategy handles those buckets differently:

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Overwrite

“Make the target match the source.” The target ends up an exact copy of the source’s mapping configuration. Anything in the target that doesn’t exist in the source is deleted.
Overwrite is destructive. Mappings in the target pipeline that don’t exist in the source will be deleted.Use it when the source is unambiguously the truth — resetting a test pipeline from main, or syncing a test pipeline you know is complete. Don’t use it on production if production contains mapping work that isn’t also on your test pipeline.
Overwrite is the default strategy when you open the Sync dialog.

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Overlay

“Add and update, never delete.” Everything new or changed in the source lands in the target. Anything the target has on its own stays exactly where it is. This is the safe choice for the common case: you added three fields on a test pipeline and want them in production, and you don’t want to risk anything else.
Overlay cannot express a deletion. If you deliberately removed a field on your test pipeline and want it gone from production too, Overlay won’t do it — use Merge or Overwrite.
When Overlay finds an entity that only the target has, it leaves it alone and reports it as Skipped in the sync result.

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Merge

“Show me every difference and let me decide.” Merge walks you through the differences one entity at a time, and within each entity, one item at a time. For each one you either accept the suggested change or leave the target alone. Nothing is applied until you commit. This is the precise option — slower, but you see and approve everything. It’s also the only strategy that lets you mix decisions: bring two fields across, leave a third, and remove a fourth, all in a single pass.

Reviewing Changes with Merge

Walk through the Merge review wizard step by step

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Choosing a Strategy

When you select a strategy in the Sync dialog, a matching banner confirms what it will do — read it before you continue. It’s the last checkpoint before a destructive change.

Sync Overview

What Sync is and where to find it

Syncing a Single Entity

Apply a strategy to one entity

Syncing Pipelines

Apply a strategy to a whole pipeline

Comparing Pipelines

See the differences before choosing