Backup & restore¶

Your entire productivity life lives in this one Postgres database. Back it up.

What to back up¶

The Postgres volume (dailyagent_pgdata) — all of your data
.env — the secrets that make the app work. Regenerating loses access until you manually reset the MCP key in OpenClaw and the SELF_HOSTED_USER_ID has to match the profile row

That's it. The code is in git. Images are rebuilt from the Dockerfile. The only irreplaceable things are the DB volume and the .env.

Quick backup: SQL dump¶

From the VPS:

docker compose exec -T postgres pg_dump -U dailyagent dailyagent | gzip > backup-$(date +%F).sql.gz

Produces something like backup-2026-04-20.sql.gz. Copy it off the VPS:

# From your laptop
scp you@vps:/path/to/mcp-dailyagent/backup-2026-04-20.sql.gz ./

Put it somewhere you trust. Tarsnap, a USB drive, an encrypted cloud backup — anywhere that isn't the same VPS.

Restore from SQL dump¶

Fresh deploy, blank DB:

# On the VPS, after docker compose up -d postgres
gunzip -c backup-YYYY-MM-DD.sql.gz | docker compose exec -T postgres psql -U dailyagent dailyagent

Or from your laptop, piping over SSH:

gunzip -c backup-YYYY-MM-DD.sql.gz | ssh you@vps "cd /path/to/mcp-dailyagent && docker compose exec -T postgres psql -U dailyagent dailyagent"

Important: the user ID must match¶

The DB is scoped by SELF_HOSTED_USER_ID. If you restore to a new deploy with a different SELF_HOSTED_USER_ID, the dashboard won't see any of the data even though the tables are full. The fix is to make .env match what's in the backup:

# Peek at the profile in the restored DB
docker compose exec postgres psql -U dailyagent -c "SELECT id FROM profiles"

Copy that UUID into .env as SELF_HOSTED_USER_ID and restart the app:

docker compose up -d --force-recreate app

Scheduled backups¶

Simple cron on the VPS, one per day, keeps 30 days locally:

# /etc/cron.d/dailyagent-backup
0 3 * * * root cd /opt/mcp-dailyagent && /usr/bin/docker compose exec -T postgres pg_dump -U dailyagent dailyagent | /bin/gzip > /var/backups/dailyagent/backup-$(date +\%F).sql.gz && find /var/backups/dailyagent -name "backup-*.sql.gz" -mtime +30 -delete

First make the directory and check it's writable:

sudo mkdir -p /var/backups/dailyagent
sudo chown root:root /var/backups/dailyagent

For off-site copies, layer rclone, rsync, or any backup tool you like on top of that directory.

Volume-level backup (alternative)¶

If you'd rather snapshot the full volume (faster, larger, binary):

docker compose down
docker run --rm \
  -v mcp-dailyagent_dailyagent_pgdata:/data \
  -v "$(pwd)":/backup \
  alpine tar czf /backup/pgdata-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /data .
docker compose up -d

Restore:

docker compose down
docker volume rm mcp-dailyagent_dailyagent_pgdata
docker volume create mcp-dailyagent_dailyagent_pgdata
docker run --rm \
  -v mcp-dailyagent_dailyagent_pgdata:/data \
  -v "$(pwd)":/backup \
  alpine sh -c "cd /data && tar xzf /backup/pgdata-YYYY-MM-DD.tar.gz"
docker compose up -d

Volume-level backups are handy but brittle — they break if the Postgres minor version changes, and they require stopping the DB. SQL dumps are almost always the better choice unless the DB is huge.

Verifying a backup¶

Don't trust a backup you haven't restored at least once. Quickest dry run:

# Spin up a throwaway Postgres with the dump
docker run --rm -d --name pgverify \
  -e POSTGRES_USER=dailyagent -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=x -e POSTGRES_DB=dailyagent \
  -p 55432:5432 postgres:16-alpine

# Wait until ready, then load the dump
gunzip -c backup-YYYY-MM-DD.sql.gz | docker exec -i pgverify psql -U dailyagent dailyagent

# Spot-check
docker exec -i pgverify psql -U dailyagent -c "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tasks;"
docker exec -i pgverify psql -U dailyagent -c "SELECT id, email FROM profiles;"

# Tear down
docker stop pgverify

If the counts match what you expect, the backup is live.

Wiping data (not backing up — destroying)¶

If you want to nuke productivity data while keeping the schema and profile, use the Danger Zone → Wipe All Data button in Settings. It preserves the profiles row. Or directly:

TRUNCATE
  tasks, habits, habit_logs, journal_entries,
  workout_templates, workout_exercises, workout_logs, workout_log_exercises,
  focus_sessions, goals, goal_progress_logs,
  spaces, tags, weekly_reviews, daily_briefings, insight_cache
CASCADE;

To completely reset (schema and all), see local-development.md#resetting-the-db.