obsidi-backup

name	obsidi-backup
description	Get started with obsidi-backup — what it is, how to set it up, and how to use it

Guide the user through getting started with obsidi-backup.

About

obsidi-backup is a lightweight sidecar container that automatically backs up Obsidian vaults with git versioning and encrypted cloud storage via restic. It watches for file changes, auto-commits with optional AI-generated messages (Claude Haiku), and pushes deduplicated backups to Azure, S3, B2, or any restic backend.

Prerequisites

Check that the user has the following installed/configured:

• Python 3.12+
• uv (Python package manager)
• Docker (for container builds and running)
• restic (for backup operations)
• git
• An Anthropic API key (optional, for AI commit messages)
• A cloud storage backend configured (Azure, S3, B2, SFTP, or local)
• RESTIC_REPOSITORY and RESTIC_PASSWORD environment variables set

Setup

Walk the user through initial setup:

1. Clone the repo and install dev dependencies:

   uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
   

2. Set required environment variables:

   export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="azure:container:/path"  # or s3, b2, sftp, local
   export RESTIC_PASSWORD="your-encryption-password"
   export VAULT_PATH="/path/to/your/obsidian/vault"
   

3. Optionally set AI commit message vars:

   export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."
   

4. For container usage, build the image:

   docker build -t vault-backup .
   

First Use

Guide the user through their first interaction with the product:

1. Run locally against a vault:

   VAULT_PATH=/path/to/vault RESTIC_REPOSITORY=... RESTIC_PASSWORD=... python -m vault_backup
   

2. The watcher will start monitoring the vault. Make a change to any file in the vault.
3. After the debounce period (default 5 minutes), a git commit and restic backup will trigger.
4. Check the health endpoint at http://localhost:8080/health to verify status.

For Docker, use the Quick Start compose snippet from README.md and run docker exec vault-backup restic init to initialize the repository on first run.

Key Files

Point the user to the most important files for understanding the project:

• src/vault_backup/__main__.py - Entry point: structured logging, Sentry init, signal handling
• src/vault_backup/watcher.py - File system monitoring with watchdog and path-segment ignore patterns
• src/vault_backup/backup.py - Git commit, restic backup, LLM commit message generation
• src/vault_backup/config.py - Frozen dataclass configuration loaded from environment variables
• src/vault_backup/health.py - HTTP /health and /ready endpoints
• src/vault_backup/ui.py - htmx-powered web UI at /ui for browsing snapshots and restoring files
• Dockerfile - Alpine-based multi-arch container image
• pyproject.toml - Project metadata, dependencies, ruff/pytest config

Common Tasks

• Run tests:

  uv run --extra dev pytest -v
  

• Run tests with coverage:

  uv run --extra dev pytest --cov=vault_backup --cov-report=term-missing
  

• Lint:

  uv run --extra dev ruff check src/
  uv run --extra dev ruff format src/
  

• Build the container:

  docker build -t vault-backup .
  

• Check issue tracker (beads):

  bd ready
  bd list --all