AI Vault
A git-backed memory vault that syncs Claude Code across Mac and VPS. Single private repo as the canonical store; read-only deploy key on the server; launchd + session Stop hook on the Mac so sleep gaps don't strand commits.
AI Vault
A unified memory vault for personal AI agents. The same folder that Claude Code already reads as memory becomes a git repository, pushed to a private GitHub repo, and cloned read-only onto a Hetzner VPS.
The Problem
Claude Code on the Mac remembered things Claude Code on the VPS didn't. A separate personal assistant (Tiger/OpenClaw) had its own brain entirely. Nothing was in version control. A VPS-only memory file list revealed seven notes that existed nowhere else — one disk failure from being gone.
How It Works
| Role | Where | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Writer | Mac | Commits + pushes via vault-push.sh |
| Canonical | GitHub (private) | ai-vault repo is the source of truth |
| Reader | VPS (Hetzner) | Read-only clone, git pull every 5 min |
Typical sync latency: under a minute (Mac CC Stop hook pushes on session end). Worst case: ~35 min.
Design Choices
- Deploy key, not personal token — read-only SSH key scoped to one repo. If the VPS is compromised, attacker gets read access to one repo, not the whole GitHub account.
launchdinstead ofcron— macOS cron doesn't fire during sleep and doesn't retry missed runs.StartInterval+RunAtLoadfires on wake-from-sleep, so closing the laptop at 3 AM doesn't strand commits overnight.- Idempotent push script — every run reconciles local commits with remote, even when it didn't just create one. Catches the "committed but push failed mid-sleep" failure mode that burned me once.
- Single writer — only the Mac writes. No merge conflicts, no two-way sync, no reconciliation logic.
Build Log
- Giving My AI a Persistent Memory That Syncs Across Three Machines — the full write-up, including the "my laptop went to sleep mid-push" debugging sub-plot
Status
Shipped 2026-04-21 (Jira: KAN-69). Vault repo private on GitHub. Tiger's persona files mirrored inside the Vault as backup; migrating Tiger's runtime onto the Vault directly is a future task.