Back up and restore your vault¶

The vault is a plain folder of Markdown files. You never need GitHub, and you do not need git at all. This page covers backing up with and without git, restoring, and what is not in the vault.

What to back up¶

What	Where	Back it up?
The notes and the originals	The vault folder: `wiki/`, `raw/`, `attachments/`, `index.md`, `log.md`, `Home.md`	Yes. `raw/` holds the only copy of what you saved
Your own files in the vault	`inbox/` (until scanned), `.obsidian/` (Obsidian's settings)	Yes, if you changed them. The worker's git history does not include them. `SCHEMA.md` is versioned, see below
Your questions for `sb eval`	`<vault>/.esbi/golden.jsonl`	Versioned with the vault when git is on (see below); otherwise yes, back it up
Benchmark reports	`<vault>/.esbi/bench/`	No: `sb bench` can make them again
The settings	`~/.config/esbi-cli/config.toml`	Yes: it is outside the vault
The mailbox password	The macOS Keychain	No: store it again after a restore
The queue, the page index, run history, logs	`<vault>/.esbi/`	No: the page index is rebuilt; the queue only remembers what was done

If you back up the whole vault folder with a normal backup tool (Time Machine, a copy to a drive), you get everything in the second and third rows too. That is the simplest way and it needs no git.

With git (recommended, optional)¶

If git is installed, sb init makes the vault a repository and every ingested source becomes one commit: you can read what changed, and undo it.

git -C ~/Documents/Obsidian/esbi log --oneline

83a0b9d index: 2026-10-03
1f1eec2 ingest: Spaced Repetition y Note-Taking
efab0eb ingest: Zettelkasten

To undo a change, git -C <vault> reset --hard <commit>. sb reingest relies on this and refuses to run without it.

The worker commits only these paths: wiki/, raw/, attachments/, index.md, log.md, Home.md, the vault's .gitignore (since 0.3.1, so the rules that keep the state folder out travel with a clone), and two files that are yours but that you would hate to lose, SCHEMA.md and .esbi/golden.jsonl (your sb eval questions). It never commits anything else of yours (inbox/, .obsidian/), and the rest of the state folder .esbi/ (the queue, the index, logs) stays ignored. The vault's .gitignore says so with two lines, .esbi/* and !.esbi/golden.jsonl. A vault made by an older version, whose .gitignore has .esbi/, is upgraded to them the first time the worker commits.

If your own ignore rules hide one of these paths (for example a SCHEMA.md line in .gitignore), the worker skips that path and commits the rest.

A backup is one more step: give the repository a remote. Any git remote works: a private repository on GitHub or GitLab, or a bare repository on a NAS, a USB drive or another computer.

sb init --remote git@example.com:you/vault.git

or answer the remote question when you run sb init. After each index refresh (every sb run, sb index and sb reingest) the vault is pushed there. A failed push is a warning (warning: vault backup not pushed: ...), never a failed run. Use a private repository: notes made from email are in the vault (Safety and privacy).

Without git¶

Everything else works: ingest, the queue, the index, sb ask, the nightly job, sb export. sb init says the vault has no history, and sb doctor shows vault history: off. Back the folder up the way you back up your documents: Time Machine, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, a copy to an external disk. sb reingest asks for git because its undo depends on it.

To turn history on later, install git (on macOS: xcode-select --install, or brew install git) and run sb init again: it only creates what is missing.

Restore¶

From a folder or disk backup¶

Copy the vault folder back where you want it, copy config.toml to ~/.config/esbi-cli/ (if the vault is at a new path, change vault in it), and check:

sb doctor

From a git remote¶

Clone the remote into the place the vault should live:

git clone git@example.com:you/vault.git ~/Documents/Obsidian/esbi

The clone has your notes, your originals, SCHEMA.md and your golden questions, but not the files the worker never commits (inbox/, the rest of the state folder). sb init makes them again and writes a config if there is none; it never overwrites anything that exists:

sb init --vault ~/Documents/Obsidian/esbi

Vault ~/Documents/Obsidian/esbi: inbox/
Config ~/.config/esbi-cli/config.toml: written

Then check, and look at the restored wiki:

sb doctor

What a restore from git loses, and what it costs:

The queue is empty. Sources you had queued but not processed need adding again; sources already processed are in the wiki, and sb add of one says already in the wiki as [[...]].
The page index and the run history are rebuilt as you go.
Your SCHEMA.md and .esbi/golden.jsonl come back with the clone, as of the last commit. A vault whose history began before the worker committed them has no copy of them in it: restore those from wherever you kept them (sb init writes a new .gitignore if the clone has none).
If you use email: sb email set-password again.

Undo a bad change without restoring¶

A wrong sb reingest: git -C <vault> reset --hard pre-reingest-<date> (the tag it printed). A wrong ingest: find its commit with git log and reset to the commit before it. A note you deleted by mistake: if no run has happened since, git -C <vault> checkout -- "wiki/sources/Title.md" brings it back; otherwise the deletion is already committed, so find it with git -C <vault> log --diff-filter=D --oneline -- "wiki/sources/Title.md" and restore it from the commit before: git -C <vault> checkout <commit>^ -- "wiki/sources/Title.md".

Move to a new Mac¶

See Move to a new Mac.