vestige-restore

name

vestige-restore

description

Restore a previously soft-deleted Vestige memory by its handle (`mem_<ULID>`). Use when a memory was forgotten in error, when the situation has reverted (a decision that was reversed gets re-affirmed), or the user says "bring back <id>", "restore <id>", "undo that forget", "that memory should still be there". Re-flips status from `deleted` to `active` and re-indexes the memory's representations into FTS. Note — embeddings are left stale by restore (they'll re-embed on the next `vestige embed` run).

Restore a soft-deleted memory

Undo a vestige-forget by flipping the memory's status back to active.

When to fire

• A memory was forgotten in error.
• A decision that was reversed has been re-affirmed (the new "decision" is "we changed our mind back").
• The user says "restore " / "bring back " / "undo that forget".

If the memory was never recorded in the first place, capture it via vestige-record-* instead — restore only works on previously soft-deleted rows.

How to invoke

vestige restore <mem_id> --json

• <mem_id> (positional, required): the handle of a previously soft-deleted memory.
• --json (optional): structured envelope.

Exit code 0 means restored. Non-zero means the id wasn't found (or wasn't in deleted state — restore only acts on soft-deleted rows).

After invocation

Surface: "Restored mem_…. It's back in search results." The memory is immediately searchable via vestige-recall again.

Note on embeddings: restore re-indexes FTS triggers automatically, but does not regenerate embeddings — the old embeddings stay marked stale. If semantic recall matters for the restored memory, suggest the user run vestige embed --all to re-embed.

Idempotence & dedup

Restore is idempotent: calling it on an already-active memory is a no-op (non-zero exit). Safe to retry.