The Mac that runs the canonical service—called the hub—owns the trails database and daily backups. A one-Mac installation already includes this complete backup path. Optional spokes keep collection state, but they are not database replicas.
Paths on the hub
| Data | Path |
|---|---|
| Canonical database | ~/.manzanita/trails/trails.sqlite |
| Daily backups | ~/.manzanita/trails/backups/ |
The installer configures a backup job for 03:00 local time. Trails uses SQLite’s backup API so the snapshot remains consistent even when the live database is using write-ahead logging.
The latest 14 committed backups are retained by default.
Create an additional backup
The installed CLI can write a one-off, consistent backup:
trails backup --output "$HOME/Desktop/trails-backup.sqlite"To write into a directory and let trails choose the timestamped file name:
trails backup --output-dir "$HOME/Desktop/trails-backups" --retain 14What a backup contains
A hub backup contains canonical trails state: normalized session observations, summaries, project and engagement organization, settings, and thread state. It does not contain the raw coding-agent transcript files that remain on each originating Mac.