Restoring an Old Version Never Overwrites History
Restoring a previous version of a Knowledge article snapshots the current live state first, so the restore itself is undoable.
The question worth asking about any version history feature is: what happens to my current content the moment I click restore? In Knowledge, the answer is specific and worth stating plainly, because it's the difference between a safety feature and a trap.
What restore actually does
Restoring a previous version isn't a direct overwrite. Before the old version becomes live, the system calls snapshotIfChanged on the current state — meaning whatever was live a moment before you restored gets saved as its own version first. The restore action itself is logged as restore_version in the audit trail, same as any other tracked change.
The practical consequence: restoring an old version doesn't destroy the version you're restoring from — it becomes recoverable too. If you restore an old version and immediately regret it, you're not stuck; the state you just replaced is sitting right there as its own snapshot, one restore away from coming back.
What's actually kept
Version history returns the last 50 snapshots via a GET request. That's a real, finite window, not unlimited history — worth knowing if you're relying on version history to reach back further than that. For most editorial workflows, 50 snapshots is a deep buffer; it's only a constraint if an article changes unusually often and you need to reach back months.
Why this design choice matters
A version-restore feature that silently discards the version you're moving away from is a trap disguised as a safety feature — it protects you from one kind of mistake (losing old content) while creating a new one (restoring the wrong version with no way back). Snapshotting the current state before restoring closes that gap: restore is not a one-way door. You can experiment with an older version without permanently committing to it, because getting back to where you were is exactly as easy as the restore you just did.
Using this with confidence
If you're unsure whether an older version is actually the one you want, restore it and check — the current state isn't lost, it's one snapshot away. That's the entire point of the design: it turns "was that the right call" from a moment of anxiety into something you can simply try and reverse if it wasn't.