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BERD TASK · 0021 · SAFEGUARD AND HAND OFF

Know where your Berd lives, and back it up

A lost laptop is a lost cast, a lost method and a lost memory — and a laptop full of client material is an exposure whether or not it is lost. Almost everything Berd knows about you is a plain text file in a known place. The one thing that is not, the conversations themselves, is the gap this page names rather than papers over. The outcome is an inventory you can act on tonight.

Steps at a glance

  1. Inventory what lives where
  2. Back up the two trees with your dotfiles
  3. Export the sessions you may need to cite
  4. Treat the laptop as the data boundary

1. Inventory what lives where

What Where Source
Your agents ~/.agents/agents/<slug>.md agent-builder skill
Your skills ~/.agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md skill-builder skill
Project-local agents and skills <project>/.agents/agents/, <project>/.agents/skills/ both builder skills
Standing rules for every Goose session ~/.config/goose/AGENTS.md Berdy's instructions
Memories (facts, preferences) ~/.config/goose/memory/ Berdy's instructions
Copycat's style guide ~/.agents/skills/write-like-me/SKILL.md Copycat's instructions
App logs ~/Library/Logs/xyz.block.berd/ on macOS CONTRIBUTING.md
Sessions the app's session database — location not documented —
Home layout, settings, providers not documented as files you can copy —

[SCREENSHOT: T21-01 — the ~/.agents tree]

An agent is a markdown file with YAML frontmatter; a skill is a folder with a SKILL.md and optional scripts/, references/ and assets/. The Home canvas card that shows an agent is a view of that file, which is why the file is the truth and the card is not.

2. Back up the two trees with your dotfiles

Add ~/.agents and ~/.config/goose to whatever already backs up your dotfiles — a versioned folder, a synced directory, a periodic copy. That covers the cast, the method, the standing rules and the memories. Nothing in the sources describes a whole-install backup or a Berd-provided export of these, so the backup is yours to arrange.

Two things to know before you sync these folders anywhere shared. The memory folder holds what Berdy saved about you, in plain text, with your word-for-word approval each time; read it before it leaves the machine. And a project-local .agents/ folder is inside the engagement's own directory, so it travels with the repository if that is where you keep it.

3. Export the sessions you may need to cite

Sessions live in an app-data session database whose location no source names. What exists is a per-session export from Session History, and an import that gives you a command to run and then asks you to refresh history — the file format is not documented, and a session too large to import from the app is refused. Export the sessions you would otherwise reach for as evidence: the one where a decision was reached, the one that produced a deliverable. Do it as you go; a session you would need to cite is by definition one you cannot reconstruct.

[SCREENSHOT: T21-02 — session export]

Whether the database is portable between machines, and what happens to the Home layout on a new one, is the corpus's largest gap; it is question 9 for the A4 session and is not answered here.

4. Treat the laptop as the data boundary

In Berd there is no relay operator in the chain, and nothing is sent anywhere by the app itself: usage reporting is off by default in official builds and excludes prompts, messages, files and credentials, and feedback logs exclude prompts, responses, tool payloads and session databases. What leaves the machine is what you send to a provider, a connection, or a Cloud voice backend. So the boundary question is not "does Berd upload" but "what is on this disk, and who has agreed to it being here". For client material that decision belongs before the work starts: Buzz or Berd.

Watch out

Anything you have not exported or copied out of ~/.agents and ~/.config/goose exists on one disk. The session database is the part you cannot back up by a documented route; export what matters, and do not promise a client a record that lives only in a Berd chat.

Last checked: Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 — read from source and release notes, not yet tested in the app.

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Reference

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Berd v0.6.4 · 2026-09-11 · source-read
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Guide built with Berd, Claude and Codex · verified against Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 · read from source, not yet tested in the app · Buzz Guide · About · not affiliated with Block