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Back up and move your data

You are about to make a big change, so you open Admin > Backups (/admin/backups), press Download a backup and keep the files. Or you are moving to a new installation: you press Move to another Player One, copy the code it gives you and paste it into the new one. Either way your chats, agents, files, memory, jobs, scheduled tasks and contacts come with you. This is one of the few things you do on a page rather than by asking, because the steps that matter ask for your password again. Your assistant can explain any of it from the Help panel, but the buttons are yours to press.

The page has three tabs. Backup prepares a backup of the whole installation. Restore brings one in. Log lists what has been backed up, restored, moved or deleted here, and when. The ... menu beside the tabs holds the finer sections: back up one project, some agents, your skills or chosen chats, and Import chosen items, which merges part of a backup into an installation you already use.

Which way to go

  • Moving to a new installation, such as a new host or a bigger plan: Move to another Player One.
  • Keeping a copy before a change, or for peace of mind: Download a backup.
  • Restoring from files you already have: the Restore tab.
  • Bringing some things into an installation you already use: Import chosen items.

What a backup holds

A backup of everything carries your work: projects, agents with their workspaces, files and skills, shared skills, chats with their uploads, jobs, flows, Memory Spaces, scheduled tasks and contact lists. It also carries the installation itself: settings, branding, preferences, usage history, messaging set-up and the lists of who may write to your assistant, webhooks, phone lines and plugins.

Some things stay with each installation. Paired browsers and computers have to be paired again, the installation's own address and network settings stay put, and the vault's encryption keys never move. Search indexes are rebuilt rather than copied. Programs installed on the old installation are listed on a checklist, not copied. A chat that came in over Telegram or WhatsApp comes back as a web chat, because the messaging account stays with the installation that owns it. Addresses tied to the old installation, such as webhook addresses and the addresses of hosted sites, carry over only if the new installation keeps the same address. Otherwise they appear on the checklist.

Secrets and the passphrase

Nothing that signs in on your behalf travels unless you ask. Include secrets adds your connected accounts and sign-ins, API keys, vault items and hosted sites, and the services your installation signs requests to, which are listed under Signed connections on Admin > MCP (/admin/mcp). Each installation keeps its own signing key. Ticking it makes a passphrase compulsory, encrypts every part with it and asks for your password. Leave it off unless you control the destination and have somewhere safe to keep the files.

Without secrets the backup still holds every chat, contact and file, so Protect with a passphrase is worth using anyway. A passphrase needs at least eight characters. Player One keeps no copy of it, so if you lose it the backup cannot be opened by anyone.

Download a backup

  1. Open Admin > Backups (/admin/backups) and, under Back up now, choose Download a backup.
  2. Decide on Include secrets or Protect with a passphrase.
  3. Select Download backup. The size is measured in the background, so you do not have to wait for it. The parts appear as each is written.
  4. When it is ready, select Download all to a folder (Chrome, Edge and other Chromium browsers) to save every part straight into a folder you choose, or Download as one file (any browser) for a single archive that Restore takes on its own.
  5. Keep every file together, named as downloaded. The small text note, About this backup, says when it was made, what it covers in counts and whether it is encrypted. The links work for 24 hours, and Past backups, folded below, lists earlier ones.

Under the links, Show what and why lists anything left out, and the files that look like they hold a password or key, with what was done with each. A backup without secrets leaves out files that are named like a credential store. Your own files that only look like they hold a key are carried as they are. Read the list before you rely on the backup.

If the installation does not have room to keep the whole backup, it prepares two parts at a time and deletes each once it has been sent. Keep the page open and download each part as it appears.

Move to a new installation by code

On the old installation

  1. Open Admin > Backups, choose Move to another Player One, decide on secrets, and select Get a move code. Confirm your password.
  2. Copy the code. It is shown once, works for one hour and is claimed by the first installation that uses it.

The old installation needs a public HTTPS address for this. A hosted installation has one. One on a home network or a laptop usually does not, and the choice is greyed out with a note to download a backup instead.

The code is a key. Anyone holding it within its hour can pull the backup, and an encrypted one stays unreadable without the passphrase. If it went anywhere it should not have, select Revoke and get another.

On the new installation

  1. Open Admin > Backups > Restore (/admin/backups/restore). Under Pull from another Player One, paste the code, select Pull and confirm your password.
  2. Enter the passphrase if the backup is encrypted, then read the summary: where it comes from, its version, its size and the checks. Nothing moves until you select Start pulling.
  3. The parts travel directly between the two installations, so you can close the page. Keep the old installation running until every part is confirmed.

Restore

A full restore goes only into a new, empty installation, because it has no undo. It puts the backup's built-in items in place of the new installation's own: the Main and General agents with their settings and files, the core Memory Spaces, the contacts in the Main list, and the Default and Memory systems Workspaces. The new installation becomes the old one again. Engram stays as it is. The page lists what it will replace before you confirm.

To restore from files instead of a code, open the Restore tab (/admin/backups/restore) and drop in the single file, or every part together with the manifest, or use Choose files. Enter the passphrase when asked. Then:

  1. Read the preview, headed "Ready to restore". It says what is in the backup and what the restore brings that runs code or lets others in, such as plugins and hosted apps, and how each arrives. Can't be restored names anything whose file the backup could not use, and Left behind names stores Player One cannot move safely. A backup that is not encrypted carries a warning, because it could have been changed: restore only a backup you made.
  2. Select Restore and confirm your password.
  3. Player One restarts once to put the restored settings in place. The page reconnects by itself.

After the restore: Go live

Everything that talks to the outside arrives switched off: messaging channels, scheduled tasks, flow triggers, webhooks, phone lines, hosted apps, plugins and connections to agents on other installations. The web app works, but no bot answers and no schedule fires. That is on purpose. Two installations on one Telegram bot, one WhatsApp session or one mailbox fight over every message, and every scheduled task fires twice.

Stop the old installation first. A hosted one is stopped by its provider, and one on your own machine by stopping its server or container. Stopping is not deleting, so keep the old data until the new one is confirmed. Then select Go live, which switches on exactly what was on at the source.

The Finish setting up list on the Done screen covers what a restore could not finish:

  • Reconnect accounts on Admin > Providers (/admin/providers) and channels on Admin > Messaging (/admin/channels).
  • Update webhook addresses on Admin > Webhooks (/admin/webhooks), and re-enter vault items that came across by name only because the backup had no secrets.
  • Issue new API keys on Admin > API keys (/admin/api-keys). Keys from a backup never open the new installation.
  • Pair browsers and computers again on Admin > Devices (/admin/devices).

Search is rebuilt after the restart. Every workspace and Memory Space is indexed again, which spends model tokens and takes from minutes to hours, and answers grow more complete as it runs.

Back up or import chosen items

The ... menu has a section for each kind of thing: Projects, Agents, Skills, Flows and Jobs, Workspaces, Memory Spaces, Scheduled Tasks, Contacts and Chats. Each exports only that. Projects (/admin/backups/projects) is the project bundle: one project, or all of them, with ticks and counts for its skills, agents, workspaces, Memory Spaces, flows, jobs, scheduled tasks and contact lists. Chats are off by default because conversations and their uploads are usually the largest part. Workspace files, agent-private skills and secrets are separate boxes, and Player One adds whatever your choices depend on, so a flow arrives with the agents it needs.

  1. Open the section, choose what to include and select Create Project bundle (or the section's own button).
  2. When the export is ready, select Download all. A large one arrives in several parts and you need them all.
  3. Keep the files somewhere of your own. Links expire, and Re-run makes a fresh archive from the same choices.

To bring part of a backup into an installation you already use, open the ... menu and choose Import chosen items (/admin/backups/restore/chosen).

  1. Drop in the backup, full or selective. You pick what comes in, and this installation's own settings stay as they are.
  2. Untick anything you do not want. Dependencies stay in whether you tick them or not, and anything that needs something missing is marked.
  3. Map the projects. An existing one is matched for you, a match by name asks you to confirm, and anything unmatched offers to create a project.
  4. Decide what happens to items already here. Keeping your copy is the default, overwriting is deliberate, and a kept item can still add to project.
  5. Select Review exact plan and read how many items will be created, overwritten, used as they are or skipped. A blocking warning stops the import and names the cause.
  6. Select Import. The Log tab (/admin/backups/log) then records what was imported and when.

An import merges rather than replaces, and it has no undo. Built-in skills never travel, though your notes on them do. Knowledge-source connections are matched, never recreated: an unclear match is skipped and named in the plan, and you reconnect it yourself.

If something goes wrong

It says "This needs a signed-in administrator". Backups with secrets, move codes, pulls and restores check your password again. A hosted installation signs you in with your Player One account and has no separate installation password to give, so for now it refuses these four actions. A backup without secrets can still be downloaded.

The backup will not start. The page says why. A backup can hold at most 500,000 files and items, and the message names the five folders holding the most, usually a node_modules or build folder in a workspace. Clear what can be rebuilt and try again. Otherwise there is not enough free space: free some, or ask for more storage.

A part is missing or damaged. Restore will not run until every part is in, and it names the ones that are not. Download them again while the links last, or prepare a new backup.

The restore says the installation is in use. A full restore needs a new, empty one. Restore into a new installation, or use Import chosen items to merge.

A passphrase is refused. Check capitals, spaces and your keyboard layout. After ten wrong tries for one backup, wait 15 minutes. A lost passphrase cannot be recovered: make a new backup on the old installation if it still exists.

The code is refused. A move code that has expired, been revoked, been used already or been copied only in part is refused. Get a new one on the old installation. If the new installation cannot reach the old one, check the old one is running and opens in a browser from outside its own network, or download a backup there instead.

A scheduled task arrived switched off. Tasks that deliver through a connected account arrive disabled. Connect the channel, then turn the task on.

The restore looks unfinished. Items shown as used as they are were kept on purpose because a match was already here. An archive made before projects existed asks which project to put everything in.

Where next