| name | backup-vault |
| description | Create a dated zip backup of the Obsidian vault and rotate old backups on a grandfather-father-son schedule (14 daily, 5 weekly, 12 monthly, 5 yearly). Use when asked to back up the vault, make a snapshot, or run/prune vault backups. |
Vault backup & rotation
Purpose
Keep a rolling set of zip snapshots of the vault in ~/Documents/obsidian/backups,
pruned to a grandfather-father-son (GFS) retention schedule so the backup folder
stays bounded instead of growing forever.
The actual work is done by backup.sh (next to this file) — the logic is
deterministic, so run the script rather than reimplementing it by hand.
Retention schedule
A backup is kept if any tier wants it; everything else is deleted.
| Tier | Rule |
|---|
| Daily | every backup from the last 14 days |
| Weekly | newest backup of each of the 5 most recent ISO weeks |
| Monthly | newest backup of each of the 12 most recent months |
| Yearly | newest backup of each of the 5 most recent years |
Tunable at the top of backup.sh (DAILY_DAYS, WEEKLY_KEEP, MONTHLY_KEEP, YEARLY_KEEP).
What gets backed up
- The full vault at
~/Documents/obsidian/umwelt, including .obsidian
(themes, plugins, settings) so a restore reproduces the exact setup.
- Excluded:
.DS_Store, .Trash/, and the backup directory itself.
- Archives are named
umwelt-YYYY-MM-DD.zip and contain a top-level umwelt/
folder, so restoring is just unzip umwelt-<date>.zip.
Instructions
- Run the script:
bash ~/.claude/skills/backup-vault/backup.sh
- Preview without changing anything:
bash .../backup.sh --dry-run
- Override paths if needed:
VAULT_DIR=... BACKUP_DIR=... bash .../backup.sh
- Report the summary line (how many backups were created / kept / pruned) and
the resulting archive size.
The script is idempotent per day: at most one backup is created per calendar
date, so it's safe to run repeatedly. Running it both creates today's snapshot
and applies retention in one pass.
Notes
- This is local only. To replicate offsite,
rsync the backups/ directory to
the remote target after running the script, e.g.
rsync -a --delete ~/Documents/obsidian/backups/ <remote>:obsidian-backups/.
Because retention deletes files locally, use --delete so the remote mirrors
the same pruned set.
- For unattended daily runs, schedule the script (launchd/cron, or the
/schedule skill). Nothing in the script needs an interactive session.
