Importing an Archive¶

Restore a .lvbak archive into your current Lumiverse account. The importer is non-destructive — your existing data is preserved, and only new content from the archive is added.

Quick Import¶

1. Open Settings → Data Portability
2. In the Import an archive card, click the file picker and select your .lvbak
3. Click Upload & import

You'll see live progress as the import runs:

Uploading… 73%
Verifying archive…
Archive extracted, applying rows…
Applying messages (4218)…
Restoring files… 312/418
Vectors restored for chat_chunks
Import complete

When it finishes, a summary table shows how many rows were imported, merged, or skipped for each table.

How Conflicts Are Resolved¶

Lumiverse uses UUIDs for every row, so archive IDs are globally unique. The import policy is "merge by ID; skip if exists":

This means re-importing the same archive is safe: nothing duplicates, nothing is overwritten.

What Happens During Import¶

The import runs as a background job. You can keep using Lumiverse while it runs, but don't close the tab until you see the completion summary.

Phases¶

1. Uploading — the archive streams from your browser to the server's import staging directory.
2. Verifying archive — the server checks the ZIP magic bytes during upload, then reads only the manifest entry to confirm it's a real Lumiverse archive (this is fast — milliseconds, even for multi-GB files).
3. Awaiting ticket (optional) — if the archive carries encrypted secrets, the import pauses for you to upload the matching decryption ticket. See API Keys & Tickets.
4. Applying rows — database rows are inserted in topological order so foreign keys resolve cleanly.
5. Restoring files — images, thumbnails, avatars, theme assets, databank documents, and your notification sound are copied into place.
6. Restoring vectors (if present) — LanceDB vectors are restored when the embedding config matches; otherwise marked for re-vectorization.
7. Restoring secrets (if a ticket was provided) — encrypted secrets are decrypted with the ticket, then re-encrypted under your instance's identity key.
8. Complete — summary shown in the panel.

Cancellation¶

If you click Cancel mid-import, the job stops within a second or two. Anything already applied stays applied — merge semantics make this safe. You can re-upload the same archive to finish later.

After the Import¶

A few things to verify:

• Characters & chats — open a familiar chat to confirm messages, swipes, and branches restored.
• Active persona / preset — restored from the archive, but you can switch in the usual place if your account already had different defaults.
• Connections — listed but disabled (the has_api_key flag is forced to 0). Re-enter your API key for each, or use the ticket flow.
• Vectors — if the embedding config didn't match, RAG and memory-cortex search will return empty results until background re-vectorization runs through your imported chunks. Watch progress in Settings → Embeddings.

Limits and Safety¶

These caps protect against zip bombs and malformed archives. Real archives, including 1.9 GB galleries with vectors, comfortably fit.

What Gets Rejected¶

Tips & Caveats¶