Backups and recovery

With a Flowsta Vault on your device, Your Own AI backs up automatically: your encryption key, your conversations, your AIs, and your memories. The backups live in your Vault on your own machine - encrypted; we never receive them.

What backs up

• Your recovery key - the key that encrypts your records, escrowed into your Vault so a lost laptop never means unreadable history.
• Every conversation - each one as its own compressed object, so backups grow only with what changed and no session is ever too large to protect.
• Your AIs - configurations, portraits, and authored knowledge.
• Your Memory - the shared profile facts.

Backups run debounced after you chat - no button to remember. The Vault's Your Data page shows what's stored, sized honestly, with per-conversation detail - and everything there is yours to export or delete.

Recovery on a new machine

Install Your Own AI and the Flowsta Vault, sign in, and restore: the key comes back from your Vault, conversations replay into your records, AIs return with their portraits and knowledge, and memory rebuilds. The Settings → Backups & recovery section walks you through it, and a restore tells you exactly what came back.

The no-lock-in guarantee

Your Vault's Download Export hands you everything - readable, with the keys included. Your Own AI's records run on Holochain under the Cryptographic Autonomy License: your data exports usable, and no technical or legal restriction stands between you and it. Even if we ceased operating, the app and your data keep working.

One honest caveat

Backups protect against a lost or broken machine only if the Vault's own data survives - keep your Flowsta recovery phrase safe, and see the Flowsta docs for the full recovery model.