hermes-backup-restore

Back up and restore Hermes Agent data — config, secrets, skills, sessions, memories, cron, profiles. Creates portable tar.gz archives with SQLite consistent snapshots, JSON manifest, and integrity verification. Use when: "back up hermes", "restore hermes", "migrate hermes to new machine", "hermes backup", "hermes restore", "hermes 数据备份", "hermes 数据恢复".

Hermes Agent Backup & Restore

Portable backup and restore scripts for Hermes Agent data.

Scripts: scripts/hermes-backup.sh and scripts/hermes-restore.sh (relative to skill root). GitHub: https://github.com/anyJohn/hermes-backup-restore

What Gets Backed Up

• Config (config.yaml, .env, auth.json)
• Skills, Memories, Sessions (state.db), Cron
• Kanban, Hooks, SOUL.md
• Platform configs, Skins, Plugins, Widgets, Pets
• Profiles (multi-profile support)
• SQLite databases (via sqlite3 .backup for consistent snapshots)

Excludes: source code, caches, locks, sockets, logs, runtime ephemera.

Backup

bash

# Default backup to ~/hermes-backup-<hostname>-<timestamp>.tar.gz
./scripts/hermes-backup.sh

# Custom output path
./scripts/hermes-backup.sh -o /path/to/backup.tar.gz

# Include hermes-agent source code
./scripts/hermes-backup.sh --full

# Back up only a specific profile
./scripts/hermes-backup.sh --profile work

# Preview what would be backed up
./scripts/hermes-backup.sh --dry-run

Restore

bash

# Restore everything
./scripts/hermes-restore.sh backup.tar.gz

# Preview
./scripts/hermes-restore.sh backup.tar.gz --dry-run

# Merge (don't overwrite existing)
./scripts/hermes-restore.sh backup.tar.gz --merge

# Auto-stop running gateway
./scripts/hermes-restore.sh backup.tar.gz --force

# Restore into a profile
./scripts/hermes-restore.sh backup.tar.gz --profile work

# Custom target dir
./scripts/hermes-restore.sh backup.tar.gz -t /target/path

Cross-Machine Migration

bash

# Machine A: backup
./scripts/hermes-backup.sh -o /tmp/my-backup.tar.gz

# Transfer
scp /tmp/my-backup.tar.gz user@machineB:/tmp/

# Machine B: restore
./scripts/hermes-restore.sh /tmp/my-backup.tar.gz --force

After restoring on a new machine, re-authenticate if API keys or OAuth tokens are machine-specific:

bash

hermes setup   # or   hermes model

Features

• Consistent SQLite snapshots: Uses sqlite3 .backup to avoid WAL corruption
• Gateway safety check: Restore detects and can auto-stop a running Hermes gateway
• Manifest: Every backup includes a JSON manifest with metadata (hostname, user, Hermes version, file list)
• Profile-aware: Back up and restore individual profiles
• Integrity verification: Restored databases are checked with PRAGMA integrity_check
• Permission hardening: Config and secrets set to chmod 600 after restore
• Dry run: Both scripts support --dry-run for safe preview

Requirements

• bash 4.0+
• rsync
• tar
• sqlite3 (recommended — falls back to raw copy if unavailable)
• python3 (for manifest parsing during restore, optional)

License

MIT