It would be useful (and probably reasonably easy) to add a button to archive an experiment on the JIST process manager. The idea is that once you have run a given experiment (successfully or not), you can then automatically generate a .tar.gz or a .zip file with the layout and the experiment results.

I see two versions: one that includes all the generated data of the experiment tree and a copy of inputs, so that the archive file is all you need to ever check and / or reproduce the experiment (there is the issue of software stability, but we'll assume it's not a problem here). This type of archive is important to keep and store for papers, possibly even to distribute if you want to create open data sets. The second version would only save the layout and the experiment tree status information (all the .input, .output, debug.out, debug.err) but not the data itself. That lighter archive could be very useful for storage of less important data (or when only the final results should be kept), and also to help users debug their pipelines when something go wrong (rather than having to ask for every piece of information).

Additionally, it would be good to add the possibility to write up some text summary (including also creation date, software versions, anything useful...) when creating the archive and store it inside as HTML or XML or .txt