Agent backup

Skill quietdaemon/starter-skills/skills/agent-backup

Free, MIT-licensed starter skills for a private, self-hosted AI assistant — back itself up, capture ideas, search your notes, self-reflect. Built to adapt, not just copy. The free funnel for the quietdaemon guide + kit.

Install

npx -y skills add quietdaemon/starter-skills --skill agent-backup

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Mirror your AI assistant's live config (skills, persona, settings, custom plugins) to a private git remote. Run on a schedule via cron — secrets and runtime state are excluded by an allowlist .gitignore. Use when asked for a manual backup, or when a backup cron fires.

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SKILL.md

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Agent Config Backup

Snapshot your assistant's live config to a private git remote so a fresh box can be rebuilt in minutes if this one dies. The whole trick is an allowlist .gitignore: you commit only the things you've explicitly named, so a stray secret can never sneak into the backup.

When to use

A scheduled backup cron fires (e.g. nightly).
The user says "back up now" / "force a backup" / "push the config".
After installing a new skill, persona, or plugin and the change should be preserved before the next scheduled window.

What's included vs. excluded

Tune these to your setup. The pattern that matters: default-deny, then allow.

Included (committed + pushed):

skills/ — your custom skills (SKILL.md + helper scripts)
the persona/system file (e.g. <SOUL_OR_SYSTEM_PROMPT_FILE>)
the main config file (model, providers, toolset toggles)
scripts/ — helper scripts
any custom plugin source you maintain

Excluded (must never leave the box):

the secrets file (.env or equivalent) — all credentials
chat history / memory databases
re-cloneable caches and git mirrors
generated artifacts (images, downloads) and runtime logs

Allowlist `.gitignore` (the safe pattern)

# Default deny everything…
/*
# …then re-allow only what you intend to back up:
!skills/
!scripts/
!config.yaml
!<SOUL_OR_SYSTEM_PROMPT_FILE>
# Belt-and-suspenders: never commit secrets even if re-included above
**/.env
**/*secret*

How to invoke

Run the helper script via your shell/terminal tool (not a sandboxed code tool that lacks git/network access):

bash <AGENT_HOME>/scripts/backup.sh

It prints one JSON line summarizing the run:

{"ok": true, "changed": true, "commit": "a1b2c3d", "files_changed": 4, "pushed": true}

Clean run with nothing to do:

{"ok": true, "changed": false, "commit": null, "files_changed": 0, "pushed": false}

Failure:

{"ok": false, "error": "...", "stage": "commit|push"}

See backup.sh for a ready-to-adapt implementation.

Cron

Schedule it however your platform does cron (a system crontab line, or your agent's built-in scheduler). A --no-agent-style script run costs no LLM tokens — the script does the work, its stdout is the result.

Pitfalls

Use an allowlist .gitignore, not a denylist. A denylist fails open — the day you add a new secret file you forgot to exclude, it ships. An allowlist fails closed.
Never name a file .gitignore inside a skill subfolder if you keep a template of these rules in another repo — git will treat it as nested, scope-limited rules. Store the template under a different name (e.g. gitignore.template) and only the real root copy stays active.
Never --amend or force-push. Always a fresh commit, so history stays linear and auditable.
On a partial failure (e.g. one optional file can't be staged), still push the rest — a mostly-current backup beats none.
Surface auth errors immediately — a push auth failure usually means the deploy key rotated or was revoked.
Never echo the secrets file or any credential, even in error output.