bd backup init|sync|status|remove|restore (plus top-level bd restore for un-compacting a single bead) — a configured Dolt backup destination, pushed to on demand, with status reporting and a restore path.
Backup is a distinct command family from sync (beads-dolt) and from export (beads-export) because the three answer different questions — where the data lives for other machines, what it looks like for other tools, and what happens when it is gone. The docs route several irreversible operations through here first: bd backup is the documented step before mode migration, and before bd flatten or bd prune destroy history (beads-compact, beads-delete).
Its presence is part of what makes the store layer a real operational concern rather than a filing convention: once the work graph is the thing that survives sessions, losing it is worse than losing a session, and “back up with bd export --all, upgrade the binary, then bd info --whats-new” is a real runbook a tracker needs and a markdown TODO list does not.
Maps to no canonical SDLC stage.
See Also
- beads-dolt — sync, which is not backup.
- beads-compact · beads-delete — the destructive operations to back up before.
- beads-migrate — the upgrade path this protects.