Exports and portability

FishMem namespace snapshots are a versioned portability contract, not a raw database dump.

Snapshot contents

A snapshot retains canonical:

• memories and their history;
• structural and named entities plus associations;
• episodes and source Documents;
• document heads and deterministic chunks;
• durable operations and journal events.

Vector and sidecar projections are marked rebuild-required. Their contents can depend on a deployment adapter or model, so exporting them as authority would make the snapshot less portable.

Import safety

Import validates the snapshot format, version, namespace ownership, dates, and references. A normal import requires an empty target namespace and an idempotency key. This prevents a partial merge from silently rewriting existing state.

Desktop restore adds a replacement workflow around the same format: validate, capture the current snapshot, purge, import, and automatically restore the previous snapshot if import fails.

Operational use

• export before a deployment migration or destructive maintenance;
• retain the application release and embedding configuration with the backup;
• restore into staging first;
• rebuild projections and run representative recall checks;
• verify Documents and history, not only the visible memory count.