Move ChatPilot to a server and back

Take your chats, settings and logins from your computer to a server ChatPilot runs on all the time, or back again.

ChatPilot on a server keeps answering, reminding and watching while your laptop sleeps. Setting up a server is in Install ChatPilot (A server that runs all the time). This page moves an existing ChatPilot there, with its chats, people, settings and logins. The same steps move it back to a computer.

1. Make a backup for moving

On the machine you move from, in the panel: Settings → Backups → Make a backup for moving. The card then has Download (handy when that ChatPilot runs on a server), Show backup password and Switch this ChatPilot off. Where ChatPilot doesn't run as your own service (Docker, a server install) the card shows the command that stops it instead.

Or in a terminal:

chatpilot backup move

It writes a backup for moving (a file chatpilot-move-….tar.gz.enc, in the backups folder or the folder you name after move) and then switches that ChatPilot off. Two copies would answer the same chats twice. In Docker run docker compose exec chatpilot chatpilot backup move, then docker compose stop; on a server install, sudo chatpilot backup move, then sudo systemctl stop chatpilot.

It also prints the backup password (the same as Settings → Backups → Show backup password). You need it on the other side; without it the file can't be opened.

If you don't move after all, start it again with chatpilot service install.

2. Bring it in on the new side

A new server (Docker or install-server.sh): start it and open the link chatpilot open prints. Below the control bot form the first-start page has Moving a ChatPilot here? Choose the file, enter the backup password, tick that the other ChatPilot is switched off and press Move it here. You don't fill in the control bot: it comes with the backup. Backups in a storage (a NAS folder, S3, WebDAV) can be restored on the same page under Restoring from your backup storage? (Backups).
A computer, or a server that already runs: chatpilot backup restore <file> with the same file. It stops ChatPilot, puts everything back and starts it again.

The panel's link moves with the backup, so run chatpilot open again afterwards for the new one.

3. What you do again

WhatsApp: a linked device only works in one place, so the backup for moving leaves it out. Link WhatsApp once more under Settings → WhatsApp; the link on the old machine stops working.
Claude Code, Codex CLI or Gemini CLI as the AI: their login belongs to the program on the old machine. Sign in again under Settings → AI → Sign in here. API keys move with the backup.
Telegram moves as it is. Telegram may ask you to confirm the new place once.

Both ChatPilot and the import tell you which of these apply, and Today shows them as Moved here: still to do, each with a button to the right place. WhatsApp ticks itself once it is linked; press Done when you're through. The data folder of the new side stays its own: a folder set in the old config.yaml is commented out there.

Checked against ChatPilot 0.1.0b1. Report a problem with this page