Backups and version control

Commit .longclaw/ to git

A ticket’s history is visible in git log the same way your code’s is. Tickets travel with the branch that changes them, land in the same review, and revert with the same command.

There is nothing else to back up.

The one thing outside your project

LongClaw keeps a list of which folders you have opened, in ~/Library/Application Support/io.longclaw.desktop/. Losing it costs you nothing but re-opening your folders. No ticket data lives there.

If you would rather not commit them

They are still just files. Copy the folder, or let whatever backs up the rest of your disk back them up too.

Merge conflicts

ticket.md is one file per ticket, so two people editing two tickets never collide. Two people editing the same ticket produce an ordinary text conflict, in a file whose structure a human can read:

• Frontmatter fields conflict line by line, like any YAML.
• Activity is append-only, so both sides’ events usually both survive — keep them both, in timestamp order.
• Checklist items carry stable IDs, so a moved line and an edited line are distinguishable.

LongClaw never rewrites a file it did not expect to see. If a merge leaves a ticket.md unparseable, it is shown as a degraded ticket with the raw file and the offending line, and left exactly as it is until you fix it.