dotclaude-sync

Daily backup of ~/.claude (Claude Code config, memory, sessions, transcripts) to a versioned local git repo plus a private off-site remote via rclone.

⚠️ Privacy warning — read this first

~/.claude contains:

• Full conversation transcripts (everything you ever pasted into Claude Code, including code, secrets, error messages, internal docs)
• MCP server configurations in ~/.claude.json backups, which often hold OAuth tokens and API keys
• Shell snapshots that may contain environment variables, including secrets exported in your shell
• Recently-opened project paths, filenames, and todos

Treat the data/ directory and your local .git history as highly sensitive. Push them only to a private destination (private Google Drive, Backblaze B2, S3 with private ACL, a private GitHub repo, etc.). This repository contains only the scripts — never commit data/ to any public location.

What it does

1. rsync mirrors ~/.claude/ into ./data/ (with an exclude list for caches and telemetry).
2. git add -A + commit of any diff, with a Daily sync YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS message.
3. Weekly git gc --auto on Sundays.
4. rclone sync of the entire repo directory (working tree and .git) to your configured private remote.

A macOS LaunchAgent runs the script daily at a time you configure.

Requirements

• macOS (for the LaunchAgent; the scripts themselves work anywhere with bash)
• rsync, git, bash
• rclone configured with a private remote (rclone config — Google Drive, B2, S3, …). Skip this if you only want local git versioning.

Setup

# 1. Clone next to your other repos
git clone https://github.com/stepanic/dotclaude-sync.git ~/git/dotclaude-sync
cd ~/git/dotclaude-sync

# 2. Configure
cp config.sh.example config.sh
$EDITOR config.sh
# Set DOTCLAUDE_REPO_DIR, DOTCLAUDE_RCLONE_REMOTE, your git identity,
# and the launchd label/time.

# 3. Install the daily job
chmod +x sync.sh restore.sh install-launchd.sh uninstall-launchd.sh
bash install-launchd.sh

Verify:

launchctl list | grep dotclaude-sync
launchctl start "$(grep '^LAUNCHD_LABEL' config.sh | cut -d'"' -f2)"   # run once now
tail -f sync.log

What gets backed up

Everything under ~/.claude/ except the patterns in exclude.txt:

• cache/, paste-cache/ — local cache
• telemetry/, statsig/, usage-data/ — telemetry
• stats-cache.json, mcp-needs-auth-cache.json
• ide/, debug/ — empty / debug
• .DS_Store, .last-cleanup

Edit exclude.txt to adjust.

Recovery on a new machine

Pull the repo from your private remote, then run restore.sh:

mkdir -p ~/git && cd ~/git
rclone copy mydrive:dotclaude-sync ./dotclaude-sync --transfers=8 --fast-list
cd dotclaude-sync
cp config.sh.example config.sh && $EDITOR config.sh
bash restore.sh

restore.sh uses rsync without --delete, so existing files on the target machine that are not in the backup (caches, telemetry) are preserved.

Layout

dotclaude-sync/
├── README.md
├── LICENSE                              # MIT
├── .gitignore                           # ignores config.sh, data/, logs
├── config.sh.example                    # template — copy to config.sh
├── exclude.txt                          # rsync exclude list
├── sync.sh                              # mirror + commit + rclone push
├── restore.sh                           # recovery
├── install-launchd.sh                   # render plist + launchctl load
├── uninstall-launchd.sh
└── com.user.dotclaude-sync.plist.template

config.sh, data/, and the log files are gitignored.

Uninstall

bash uninstall-launchd.sh

The script unloads and removes ~/Library/LaunchAgents/<label>.plist. Your local mirror in data/ and the git history are kept; remove the directory manually if you want them gone.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.