Backup and moving machines

Export

Project settings → Export backup…, set a passphrase (at least 8 characters), and you get a single .zip.

The passphrase protects the machine-local data that cannot travel in the clear; it does not encrypt the archive as a whole. Your project files are inside it as ordinary zip entries, readable by anyone holding the file — so store and send it the way you would treat the project folder itself.

What travels

The Agent NextUp management layer, not a copy of your repository:

• The parts of .nextup/ that define the project — configuration, module switches, workflow state, the event ledger, handoff snapshots, and pending or received delivery envelopes.
• tasks/, including each task’s artifact bundle (tasks/T-XXXX/), and work_record/ (the monthly work-report folder initialisation seeds with a _TEMPLATE.md).
• specs/ — the curated current-state spec layer, including the specs already folded in from finished tasks.
• The handoff layer: AGENTS.md, its CLAUDE.md import shell, project.yaml, nextup_docs/, memory/, and the workspace skills.
• artifacts/ only if you tick “Include artifacts/” — that box is off by default.
• Which hub tools you had authorised — but as a list to approve, not as live grants. Giving an agent write access on a new machine is a decision for that machine, so the restore parks the list and the Tools page asks you once (see the checklist below). The one setting that does apply on its own is a restriction: if you had switched agents off for this workspace, it restores switched off.

What does not

• Ordinary working files in the project root: your source code, your README, anything git already tracks. Move the folder itself, or let git move it.
• Machine-local files: .nextup/secrets.enc and the rebuildable search index.
• .nextup/asset_backups/ — the local safety net holding pre-upgrade copies of shipped files. It is deliberately left behind; it protects the machine it was made on.
• The root .mcp.json, the pointer that lets an agent CLI find the hub. It is written fresh per machine.

Restore

On the other machine: All projects → Import backup → pick the zip, pick a destination folder, enter the passphrase. The destination must not already be an Agent NextUp workspace, and a wrong passphrase aborts before anything is written.

Two things are worth checking straight after a restore:

1. Answer the hub-tool prompt. Until you do, every write tool is off — agents can read but not write, and a refused write looks like the agent misbehaving rather than a permission waiting for you. The Tools page lists the tools the backup had authorised with Restore these grants and No thanks; tools that belong to a module that is off here are skipped. (Backups made before version 0.2.0 carry no such list: there the write tools start off and you enable them yourself.)
2. Glance at the hub connection. Import rewires the root .mcp.json for this machine automatically, so an agent CLI started in that folder finds the hub straight away. If the health card on the Tools page says Needs repair — the pointer is stale — press Repair connection. If it says Executable missing, repair cannot help: that machine has no hub binary to point at, which means installing the app there or building it from source.