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Backups

Your memory database is a single SQLite file: ~/.claude-mem/claude-mem.db. With backups on, the worker takes a consistent snapshot of it on a schedule (every 24 hours by default) and keeps the newest 7 under ~/.claude-mem/backups/auto/. Snapshots stay on your machine. Snapshots are safe while sessions run: the worker uses SQLite’s VACUUM INTO on a read-only connection, which writes a compacted, consistent copy without pausing anything. Each snapshot is one standalone database file, checked with PRAGMA quick_check before it is kept.
Cloud sync and backups solve different problems. Cloud sync replicates individual memories across your devices as you work. Backups are whole database snapshots you can roll back to.

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Enable snapshots

In Claude Code, run the skill:
Or turn it on in the viewer (Settings → Backups → Automatic snapshots), save, and restart the worker. Or edit ~/.claude-mem/settings.json:
After a worker restart, the first snapshot is taken about five minutes later.
npx claude-mem doctor also warns when backups are on but the newest snapshot is older than two intervals.

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Restore

restore stages the snapshot and restarts the worker. The new worker swaps the database in before it opens it, and saves the database it replaced in the same folder as claude-mem-<timestamp>-pre-restore.db. To undo a restore, restore that file. It counts toward the retain count like any snapshot, so copy it elsewhere if you want to keep it longer. backup status prints the outcome. If the swap could not run (for example, another process still had the database open), it says why and the worker keeps the database it had. The swap is crash-safe: at every step the database on disk is either the old one or the restored one, each complete. New memories written after a restore never reuse an id from the database it replaced.
With cloud sync on, the restored database resumes syncing from the position saved in the snapshot, so it can pull back changes that reached the cloud after the snapshot was taken. Restore is for recovering a damaged or lost local database, not for undoing synced changes.

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Settings

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FAQ

Where are my backup files? In ~/.claude-mem/backups/auto/, named claude-mem-<timestamp>.db. Each one is a complete SQLite database you can open with any SQLite tool. Does a snapshot include the vector search index? No. The SQLite database is the source of truth; the vector index is derived from it. How much disk does this use? About your database size times the retain count. VACUUM INTO compacts each snapshot, so it is usually a little smaller than the live database. The worker skips a snapshot when free disk is below 1.2 times the database size plus 100 MiB, and reports that as the last error. Do backups slow down my sessions? No. Snapshots run in the background worker on a read-only connection.