cline-b2-backup

Incremental, encrypted backup of your Cline task history, conversations, and state to Backblaze B2 — across VS Code, Insiders, VSCodium, Cursor, and Windsurf.

Built on @backblaze-labs/agent-backup-core.

Why

Cline auto-saves every task (full conversation, metadata) locally, but its only built-in export is per-task markdown — there's no full backup, sync, or restore, and data-loss reports are common. This mirrors all of it to B2 on a schedule.

Install & configure

npm install -g @backblaze-labs/cline-b2-backup
export B2_KEY_ID=004... B2_APPLICATION_KEY=K004... B2_BUCKET=my-cline-backups
export B2_ENCRYPTION_KEY="a long random passphrase"   # important — see Security

Or ~/.config/cline-b2-backup/config.json. Optional: B2_REGION, B2_PREFIX, B2_SCHEDULE, B2_KEEP_SNAPSHOTS, CLINE_DIR.

Run

cline-b2-backup            # daemon: auto-restore on first run, back up now, then on schedule
cline-b2-backup --once     # single backup then exit
cline-b2-backup --install  # install an OS service (launchd / systemd / Task Scheduler)
cline-b2-backup --help     # usage

--install runs the daemon as a background service, which can't see your shell's export B2_* variables — put your credentials in ~/.config/cline-b2-backup/config.json (chmod 600) before activating it.

What gets backed up

Cline splits its state across two locations; this tool covers both and auto-discovers every editor you have Cline installed in:

• ~/.cline/data/ (or CLINE_DIR) — globalState.json, secrets.json, workspaces/<hash>/.
• Each editor's …/User/globalStorage/saoudrizwan.claude-dev/ (VS Code, Insiders, VSCodium, Cursor, Windsurf, plus VS Code profiles — discovered automatically) — state/taskHistory.json and tasks/<id>/ conversations.

Excluded by default:

• Checkpoints (checkpoints/) — Cline's per-workspace shadow-git can reach tens of GB; mirroring it offsite is rarely worth the cost. (Your project's real git history is unaffected.)
• Regeneratable caches: settings/, *_models.json, mcp_marketplace_catalog.json.

Restore note

Restoring writes back into the same editor/profile directories the backup came from. On a fresh machine, an editor whose globalStorage directory doesn't exist yet (the editor was never launched, or has a different product/profile name) is silently skipped — its data is left in B2, not restored — and the restore logs a per-file warning rather than failing. So before restoring, install and launch each editor (so Cline's storage dir exists). Backup itself has no such requirement.

Security

• Set B2_ENCRYPTION_KEY — separate from your B2 credentials. Cline stores provider API keys in plaintext at ~/.cline/data/secrets.json; this tool includes that file (needed for a full restore) but encrypts the whole mirror at rest. Without B2_ENCRYPTION_KEY it falls back to the B2 key and warns.

License

MIT