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Backup & Restore

Protect your skills and recover from mistakes.

Overview​

skillshare maintains automatic backups and provides manual backup/restore commands.

Automatic Backups​

Backups are created automatically before:

  • skillshare sync (skill targets and agent targets)
  • skillshare sync agents (agent targets only)
  • skillshare target remove

Location: ~/.local/share/skillshare/backups/<timestamp>/ (agent backups appear as <target>-agents/ next to the regular <target>/ directories).

Scope: Only local target content is captured. Merge-mode symlinks are skipped because they point into your source — sync recreates them. See What Gets Backed Up.

Manual Backup​

All targets​

skillshare backup

Specific target​

skillshare backup claude

Preview​

skillshare backup --dry-run

List Backups​

skillshare backup --list

Example output:

All backups in ~/.local/share/skillshare/backups (56.3 KB total)
─────────────────────────────────────────
  2026-09-28_12-52-50  claude, claude-work, cursor, gemini, opencode, universal   11.3 KB  ~/.local/share/skillshare/backups/2026-09-28_12-52-50
  2026-09-28_12-41-50  claude, claude-work, cursor, gemini, opencode, universal   11.2 KB  ~/.local/share/skillshare/backups/2026-09-28_12-41-50
  2026-09-28_12-39-56  claude, claude-work, cursor, gemini, opencode, universal   11.2 KB  ~/.local/share/skillshare/backups/2026-09-28_12-39-56

In the dashboard, Settings → Backup → Target folders lists the same snapshots:

Settings › Backup › Target folders with snapshots and restore actions

Restore​

From latest backup​

skillshare restore claude

From specific backup​

skillshare restore claude --from 2026-01-19_10-00-00

Preview​

skillshare restore claude --dry-run

What Restore Does​

Note: After restore, the target contains real files (not symlinks). Run skillshare sync to re-establish symlinks.

Cleanup Old Backups​

skillshare backup --cleanup

Removes backups older than the configured retention period. Retention already runs automatically after every sync, so this is only for pruning on demand.

To check how much space snapshots use:

du -sh ~/.local/share/skillshare/backups
skillshare backup --cleanup --dry-run   # Preview what would be removed

See Backups & Disk Space for how backup scope differs from .gitignore and ignore:.

Recovery Scenarios​

# If git is initialized (recommended)
cd ~/.config/skillshare/skills
git checkout -- deleted-skill/

# Or restore from backup
skillshare restore claude
skillshare sync

Messed up sync mode​

skillshare restore claude
skillshare target claude --mode merge
skillshare sync

Want to undo recent changes​

skillshare backup --list
skillshare restore claude --from <earlier-timestamp>

Recover an agent​

Agents have their own backup entries (<target>-agents) and follow the same flow as skills:

# Manual agent backup
skillshare backup agents claude

# Restore from latest
skillshare restore agents claude

# Restore from a specific timestamp
skillshare restore agents claude --from 2026-01-19_10-00-00

In project mode, only agents can be backed up or restored — skillshare backup -p agents works, but plain skillshare backup -p errors. See backup for the project-mode rule.

Get back an earlier version of a file​

skillshare also keeps earlier versions of single files it rewrites, such as AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md and the locations of shared files:

skillshare backup files                               # Files with saved versions
skillshare backup files show ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md      # Pick a version ID
skillshare backup files restore ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md <id>

The dashboard has the same under Settings › Backup › Files, with a diff before restoring. See File History.

Best Practices​

Before risky operations​

skillshare backup

After major changes​

skillshare push -m "Major update"  # Git backup

Weekly maintenance​

skillshare backup --cleanup

Git as Backup​

Git provides an additional backup layer:

# Recover deleted skill
cd ~/.config/skillshare/skills
git checkout -- deleted-skill/

# See history
git log --oneline

# Restore to previous commit
git checkout <commit-hash> -- specific-skill/

See Also​