Files and paths

Everything Yachiyo persists lives in one directory. There is no hidden state elsewhere, no application-support cache doing something important, and no server holding a copy.

`~/.yachiyo`

Path	What it is
`config.toml`	All settings — providers, tools, skills, memory, web search. Reference
`channels.toml`	Channel credentials and tuning. Reference
`yachiyo.sqlite`	Threads, messages, tool calls, memory, schedules, run history
`SOUL.md`	Assistant persona and evolving trait log
`USER.md`	Your profile, as structured tables
`skills/core/`	Bundled skills. Re-extracted on every launch — edits are lost.
`skills/custom/`	Your own skills
`bin/yachiyo`	CLI wrapper. Regenerated on every launch; do not edit.
`yachiyo.sock`	Unix socket the `send` commands talk to
`temp-workspace/<thread-id>/`	Auto-created workspaces for threads with no assigned directory
`file-history/`	Run file snapshots (content-addressed)
`workspace-indexes/`	Search indexes for registered workspaces
`web-search/browser-session/`	The hidden browser session used by search
`browser-automation/`	`useBrowser` sessions and profile
`jotdowns/`	Quick notes captured with the jot-down shortcut
`activity-source.key`	Key for the activity source

`YACHIYO_HOME`

Set YACHIYO_HOME to move the entire directory:

YACHIYO_HOME=/tmp/yachiyo-test yachiyo thread list

Everything above relocates together — config, database, skills, sockets. This is the clean way to run an isolated instance for testing without touching your real history.

The CLI can also point at individual files, which is handy for reading a copy of a database without moving anything else:

yachiyo thread list --db /path/to/yachiyo.sqlite
yachiyo config get --settings /path/to/config.toml
yachiyo soul traits list --soul /path/to/SOUL.md

What to back up

Priority	Path	Why
High	`yachiyo.sqlite`	Your entire conversation history
High	`SOUL.md`, `USER.md`	Persona and profile — small, and slow to rebuild
High	`skills/custom/`	Skills you wrote
Medium	`config.toml`	Settings. Contains API keys — encrypt it.
Medium	`channels.toml`	Bot credentials. Same warning.
Skip	`temp-workspace/`, `file-history/`, `workspace-indexes/`, `web-search/`, `browser-automation/`	Regenerated, and large

What leaves your machine

Only the requests you cause: calls to the providers you configured, pages the agent fetches, searches you run, and channel messages. There is no telemetry and no hosted backend.

Sync is the one exception, and it is opt-in and points at a folder you choose — it copies config.toml (API keys included) and chat archives into that directory.