Backup and upgrades

What to back up

Data	Location	Notes
Database	Compose volume `chatai_pgdata`	Assistants, chunks, conversations, API keys
Uploads	Compose volume `chatai_uploads`	Original files under `/app/uploads`
Config	Your `.env` / secrets store	Not in the image

Database dump

With Compose running:

docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U chatai -d chatai -Fc > chatai-$(date +%Y%m%d).dump

Plain SQL:

docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U chatai -d chatai > chatai-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql

Restore

# Example: custom format dump into a fresh volume
docker compose up -d db
docker compose exec -T db pg_restore -U chatai -d chatai --clean --if-exists < chatai-YYYYMMDD.dump

Prefer restoring into an empty database or a new volume. Coordinate with app downtime so ingest workers are not writing mid-restore.

Uploads volume

Copy the named volume or bind-mount contents. Example with a temporary Alpine container:

docker run --rm \
  -v chatai-v07-self-hosting-docs_chatai_uploads:/data \
  -v "$PWD:/backup" \
  alpine tar czf /backup/chatai-uploads-$(date +%Y%m%d).tgz -C /data .

Adjust the volume name to match docker volume ls on your host (Compose prefixes the project name).

Upgrade flow

Back up Postgres and uploads
Pull / rebuild the app image:
```
git pull
docker compose build app
```
Restart so the entrypoint runs migrations:
```
docker compose up -d app
```
Migrations run automatically via node /app/packages/database/scripts/migrate.mjs on boot. You do not need to apply 0000_*.sql by hand.

Smoke health:

curl -s http://localhost:3000/api/health
# {"status":"ok","db":"ok"}

Existing databases

If an older install only applied the first SQL file and skipped later migrations, restarting the current image applies pending Drizzle migrations (0001–…) on boot.