kenn-io--agentsview/docs/pg-sync.md

title, description

title	description
PostgreSQL Sync	Share sessions across machines with PostgreSQL push sync, an auto-push service, and a read-only server

AgentsView stores sessions locally in SQLite by default. PostgreSQL sync lets you push sessions from one or more machines into a shared PostgreSQL database, keep that database current with an optional auto-push watcher or OS service, then serve a read-only web UI from it — useful for team dashboards or multi-machine setups.

The sync direction is one-way: SQLite to PostgreSQL. Each machine pushes its own sessions; pg serve reads from the shared database. The resulting UI includes the session browser, analytics dashboard, search, and, as of 0.23.0, the Usage dashboard as well.

Quick Start

1. Configure PostgreSQL

Add a [pg] section to ~/.agentsview/config.toml:

[pg]
url = "postgres://user:pass@host:5432/dbname?sslmode=require"
machine_name = "my-laptop"

The machine_name identifies which machine pushed each session. It defaults to the system hostname if omitted. It must not be "local" (reserved for the local SQLite sentinel).

For multiple PostgreSQL destinations, use named [pg.NAME] blocks and default_pg instead of the legacy single [pg] block. Named target names are normalized case-insensitively, and all, local, plus the legacy [pg] field names url, schema, machine_name, allow_insecure, projects, and exclude_projects are unavailable as [pg.NAME] names.

2. Push Sessions

agentsview pg push

This one-shot command syncs all local sessions, messages, and tool calls to PostgreSQL. The schema is created automatically on first push.

To keep PostgreSQL current automatically, run the foreground watcher:

agentsview pg push --watch

Or install it as a per-user background service on macOS or Linux:

agentsview pg service install

3. Serve the Dashboard

agentsview pg serve

Opens the read-only web UI at http://127.0.0.1:8080, backed entirely by PostgreSQL. No local SQLite, file watching, or uploads — just the viewer.

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Commands

agentsview pg push

Sync sessions from the local SQLite database to PostgreSQL.

agentsview pg push [target] [flags]

Flag	Default	Description
--all	false	Push every configured PG target sequentially
--full	false	Force full local resync and re-push, bypassing change detection
--no-vectors	false	Skip the semantic-search vector phase for this run
--projects		Comma-separated projects to push (inclusive)
--exclude-projects		Comma-separated projects to exclude
--all-projects	false	Ignore configured project filters for this run
--watch	false	Run continuously, pushing on change plus a periodic floor
--debounce	30s	Coalesce window after a filesystem change before pushing (--watch only)
--interval	15m	Periodic floor push interval (--watch only)

Without --watch, push is on-demand — run it whenever you want to sync. With --watch, the command stays in the foreground and keeps pushing until interrupted.

When no target is passed, pg push uses the effective default target. Pass one named target explicitly to push just that destination, or use --all to fan out across every configured target. --all --watch is rejected.

What happens on push:

1. Runs a local sync to pick up any new or modified session files
2. Compares local sessions against the PostgreSQL watermark to find what changed since the last push
3. Upserts sessions, messages, tool calls, and (as of 0.30.0) curation metadata in batches of 50
4. Advances the watermark timestamp on success

Incremental pushes use a two-layer fingerprint to skip unchanged sessions: first, session metadata fields (project, agent, timestamps, message counts) are compared; then, per- session message statistics (count, content length sum/max/min, system message ordinals, tool call counts) are checked against PostgreSQL. Use --full to bypass both layers and re-push everything — for example, after a schema reset or when message content was rewritten in place.

If any sessions fail to push, the watermark is not advanced so they are retried on the next run. The exit code is 1 when any errors occur, 0 otherwise.

Automatic Push Watcher

As of 0.32.0, agentsview pg push --watch runs a long-lived auto-push daemon in the foreground:

agentsview pg push --watch
agentsview pg push --watch --debounce 1m
agentsview pg push --watch --interval 5m

The watcher performs one initial local sync plus PostgreSQL push, then pushes again after session-directory changes settle for the debounce window. The interval acts as a floor: even if filesystem events are missed or a root cannot be watched because of OS watch limits, the next interval push catches up.

Operational details:

• Only one watcher can run per AgentsView data directory; a runtime lock prevents competing pushes from racing watermarks.
• PostgreSQL connections are opened lazily and reset after errors, so a transiently unavailable database is retried on the next trigger instead of crashing the watcher.
• On shutdown (Ctrl+C, SIGTERM), the watcher attempts one bounded final flush.
• Logs are written to pg-watch.log under the AgentsView data directory.
• The watcher uses the selected PostgreSQL target, or the default_pg target when no name is passed, along with the same machine name, project filters, classifier settings, and result_content_blocked_categories behavior as one-shot pg push.

Project Filtering

By default, pg push syncs all projects. Use project filters to push a subset:

# Push only these projects
agentsview pg push --projects alpha,beta

# Push everything except this project
agentsview pg push --exclude-projects scratch

# Ignore config-file filters for this run
agentsview pg push --all-projects

--projects and --exclude-projects are mutually exclusive. --all-projects cannot be combined with either.

Project filters can also be set in config.toml so you don't need to pass them on every run:

[pg]
url = "postgres://..."
projects = ["alpha", "beta"]
# or: exclude_projects = ["scratch"]

CLI flags override config values. Use agentsview projects to list available project names.

Filtered pushes keep their own local push watermark for each target/filter set. For example, repeated agentsview pg push --projects alpha,beta runs use a different watermark from unfiltered pushes and from agentsview pg push --projects gamma. This keeps allow-list pushes incremental without advancing the unfiltered/global cursor.

After upgrading from an older version, the first filtered push for a given project set may still scan the matching local sessions once to seed that scoped watermark. Later pushes with the same filter set use the scoped watermark.

Curation Metadata

As of 0.30.0, pg push also synchronizes two pieces of per-user curation state alongside session content:

PostgreSQL table	What it holds
starred_sessions	One row per starred session: session_id, created_at
pinned_messages	One row per pin: id, session_id, message_id, ordinal, source_uuid, note, created_at

Stars are keyed by session ID and overwrite cleanly across machines. Pins are reconciled by source_uuid — a stable identifier derived from the underlying message — so a pin survives a re-parse that shifts message ordinals. Without this, pins would silently drift to the wrong message after any session resync.

Curation tables are populated by the same pg push run; no separate command or flag is required. The agentsview secrets findings also push through this codepath, with the same parity guarantees as session content (secret_findings table, per-session secret_leak_count, and the has-secret list filter).

Vector Push

When [vector] is enabled locally, pg push runs a vector phase after the session and message phases, copying the machine's active embedding generation from vectors.db into pgvector so a shared PostgreSQL deployment can answer --semantic/--hybrid. Only changed sessions are re-sent. Skip the phase for one run with --no-vectors, or disable it persistently with push_vectors = false under [pg]. Databases without pgvector (for example CockroachDB) skip the phase and keep syncing session content. See semantic search: PostgreSQL for the full push, serve, and maintenance workflow.

pg vectors list and pg vectors drop <id> inspect and remove pushed generations.

agentsview pg status

Show the current sync state.

agentsview pg status [target] [flags]
agentsview pg status --all
agentsview pg status --projects alpha,beta

Without a target name, pg status uses the effective default target. Pass one named target explicitly to inspect that destination, or use --all to print every configured target sequentially.

Use the same --projects, --exclude-projects, or --all-projects filter flags as pg push to inspect the matching filtered or unfiltered watermark.

Output:

Machine:     my-laptop
Last push:   2026-03-24T10:30:00Z
PG sessions: 1842
PG messages: 47291

Field	Description
Machine	Configured machine name or hostname
Last push	Timestamp of last successful push ("never" if no push yet)
PG sessions	Total session count in PostgreSQL (all machines)
PG messages	Total message count in PostgreSQL (all machines)

agentsview pg service

Install and manage the pg push --watch auto-push daemon as a per-user OS service.

agentsview pg service install
agentsview pg service status
agentsview pg service logs -f
agentsview pg service stop
agentsview pg service start
agentsview pg service uninstall

Supported service managers:

Platform	Manager
macOS	launchd LaunchAgent
Linux	systemd --user unit

The generated unit runs agentsview pg push --watch, pins AGENTSVIEW_DATA_DIR to the data directory used at install time, and writes logs to ~/.agentsview/pg-watch.log unless you changed the data directory.

install requires a literal PostgreSQL URL in the effective default target of ~/.agentsview/config.toml, either the legacy [pg].url or the target selected by default_pg from named [pg.NAME] blocks. It intentionally rejects AGENTSVIEW_PG_URL and environment-expanded URLs such as ${PG_PASSWORD} because background services do not inherit your interactive shell environment. Other session-directory environment variables are not copied into the unit either; put persistent settings in config.toml before installing.

On headless Linux machines, systemd --user services stop at logout and do not start at boot unless user lingering is enabled. If lingering is disabled, install prints the exact loginctl enable-linger "$USER" command and offers to run it.

agentsview pg serve

Start a read-only web UI backed by PostgreSQL.

agentsview pg serve [flags]

Flag	Default	Description
--host	127.0.0.1	Bind address
--port	8080	Port
--base-path		URL prefix for reverse-proxy subpath
--public-url		Public-facing URL for proxy access
--public-origin		Trusted browser origin (repeatable/comma-separated)
--public-port	8443	External port for managed proxy
--proxy		Managed proxy mode (caddy)
--caddy-bin	caddy	Caddy binary path
--proxy-bind-host	0.0.0.0	Caddy bind address
--tls-cert		TLS certificate path
--tls-key		TLS key path
--allowed-subnet		CIDR allowlist (repeatable/comma-separated)

The server is read-only — uploads, file watching, and local sync are all disabled. Sessions from all machines appear in a single unified view. The same deployment also serves the analytics dashboard and the Usage page from PostgreSQL-backed queries.

On startup, pg serve automatically applies any pending schema migrations to PostgreSQL, creating new tables and indexes added in newer AgentsView versions. This removes the need to run pg push before starting the server after an upgrade. If the PostgreSQL role is read-only, the migration is skipped and the server falls back to the schema compatibility check.

When require_auth is enabled, a bearer token is generated if needed and printed on startup. Pass it via Authorization: Bearer <token> on API requests. The SSE watch endpoint also accepts ?token=<token> as a query parameter since the EventSource API cannot set custom headers.

For LAN access, combine require_auth = true with a non-loopback bind such as agentsview pg serve --host 0.0.0.0, or keep the backend on loopback and expose it through a proxy.

pg serve does not expose the global live-refresh event stream used by normal agentsview serve, because there is no local sync engine attached to the server. The session browser, analytics, and usage views still work normally; they are just not auto-refreshed by the global SSE path.

As of 0.33.0, the web UI distinguishes a degraded backend (the server responds but PostgreSQL is temporarily unavailable, surfacing as 5xx errors) from an unreachable one. Instead of forcing a page reload — which could loop while the database was down — the app stays interactive with its current data, shows a compact warning in the status bar, and clears it once a real data read succeeds. Click the status bar to retry immediately. True network failures still use the reload-based recovery path.

CockroachDB also works as the shared database. 0.33.0 reworked the analytics and usage queries to perform well on CockroachDB (filter pushdown into the source tables, SQL-side tool-call aggregation, batched pricing writes) without changing any report semantics on PostgreSQL or SQLite.

!!! warning Query-parameter tokens can leak through server logs, browser history, and Referer headers. Prefer the Authorization header for all non-SSE requests, and use TLS (via managed Caddy or an external reverse proxy) to protect tokens in transit.

For managed Caddy mode, keep the backend --host on loopback and use --proxy-bind-host / --public-port to expose the public listener. The pg serve and normal serve modes keep separate managed-Caddy state, so both can coexist on one host.

Examples:

!!! warning "Enable auth before exposing pg serve" Only the loopback example below is safe without auth. Every other example binds off 127.0.0.1 or fronts a public proxy, so set require_auth = true in ~/.agentsview/config.toml before starting the server. The same bearer-token mechanism described in Remote Access applies.

# Local development — loopback, no auth required
agentsview pg serve

# Team viewer with managed Caddy and TLS
# Requires require_auth = true in config.toml
agentsview pg serve \
  --proxy caddy \
  --public-url https://viewer.example.com \
  --public-port 8443 \
  --tls-cert /path/to/cert.pem \
  --tls-key /path/to/key.pem

# Remote access on a trusted private network (no TLS)
# Requires require_auth = true; only use behind a VPN or on a
# private LAN because tokens cross the wire in cleartext.
agentsview pg serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080

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Machine Labels

When multiple machines push to the same PostgreSQL database, each session is tagged with its source machine name. In the web UI, session items show a machine label when the session did not originate from the local machine. Use the multi-host filter in the sidebar to show sessions from specific machines.

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Configuration

Single-target PostgreSQL settings can live in the legacy [pg] section of ~/.agentsview/config.toml:

[pg]
url = "postgres://user:pass@host:5432/dbname?sslmode=require"
machine_name = "my-laptop"
schema = "agentsview"
allow_insecure = false

Field	Default	Description
url	(required)	PostgreSQL connection string
machine_name	OS hostname	Identifies the pushing machine; defaults to os.Hostname() if omitted
schema	agentsview	PostgreSQL schema name
allow_insecure	false	Allow non-TLS connections to non-loopback hosts
projects		Array of project names to include in push
exclude_projects		Array of project names to exclude from push

To manage more than one PostgreSQL destination, define named [pg.NAME] blocks and select the effective default target with default_pg:

default_pg = "work"

[pg.work]
url = "postgres://user:pass@work-db:5432/agentsview?sslmode=require"
machine_name = "my-laptop"

[pg.archive]
url = "postgres://user:pass@archive-db:5432/agentsview?sslmode=require"
machine_name = "my-laptop-archive"
exclude_projects = ["scratch"]

agentsview pg push and agentsview pg status use the effective default target when no target name is passed, accept one target name explicitly, and also support --all for sequential multi-target runs. agentsview pg push --watch follows the effective default target unless you pass one named target explicitly. agentsview pg serve and agentsview pg service stay on the effective default target in this release, and --all --watch is rejected.

!!! warning The url field is required for all pg commands. If it contains credentials, ensure config.toml has restricted file permissions (0600).

The connection string supports standard PostgreSQL parameters. Use sslmode=require or sslmode=verify-full for remote databases. Only use sslmode=disable for trusted local connections.

Environment variables in the URL are expanded using ${VAR} syntax:

[pg]
url = "postgres://${PG_USER}:${PG_PASSWORD}@host:5432/dbname?sslmode=require"

Environment Variables

PostgreSQL settings can also be configured via environment variables. In legacy single-target mode they override the [pg] values. In named-target mode they apply only to the effective default target:

Variable	Description
AGENTSVIEW_PG_URL	PostgreSQL connection URL
AGENTSVIEW_PG_MACHINE	Machine name for push sync
AGENTSVIEW_PG_SCHEMA	Schema name (default agentsview)

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Multi-Machine Workflow

A typical team setup:

1. Each developer configures [pg] in their local config.toml with a unique machine_name
2. Each developer installs agentsview pg service or runs agentsview pg push --watch to sync their sessions
3. One server runs agentsview pg serve pointed at the shared PostgreSQL database
4. The team opens the shared dashboard to browse everyone's sessions, filtered by machine if needed

# Developer A's machine
agentsview pg service install

# Team server
agentsview pg serve \
  --proxy caddy \
  --public-url https://viewer.team.internal \
  --tls-cert /etc/certs/viewer.pem \
  --tls-key /etc/certs/viewer-key.pem

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Limitations

• One-way sync — sessions flow from SQLite to PostgreSQL only. Changes in PostgreSQL do not propagate back to local machines.
• Permanent deletes not propagated — sessions removed via agentsview prune are not deleted from PostgreSQL because the local rows no longer exist at push time. Use a direct SQL DELETE to clean up PostgreSQL if needed. Soft-deleted sessions (trash) sync correctly.
• Schema compatibility — pg serve automatically applies pending schema migrations on startup. If the PostgreSQL role lacks DDL permissions, run agentsview pg push from a machine with write access to update the schema.
• Trigram index bloat on pre-0.33.0 schemas — the content search index was created with GIN fastupdate on, which let a pending-insert list grow unbounded under continuous ingest. 0.33.0 creates the index with fastupdate = off and alters existing indexes automatically, which stops further growth — but space already consumed is only reclaimed by a one-time REINDEX INDEX idx_messages_content_trgm;.