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live sync

docs/guides/live-sync.md

Live Sync: Keep the Index Current

Goal

Every markdown change in the brain repo is searchable within minutes, automatically, with no manual intervention.

What the User Gets

Without this: you correct a hallucination in a brain page, but the vector DB keeps serving the old text because nobody ran gbrain sync. Stale search results erode trust. The brain becomes unreliable.

With this: edits show up in search within minutes. The vector DB stays current with the brain repo automatically. You never have to remember to run sync.

Implementation

Prerequisite: a reachable direct connection

GBrain is tuned for the Supabase Transaction pooler (port 6543): it auto-disables prepared statements there and routes engine.transaction() (migrations, DDL, sync imports) to a derived direct connection (db.<ref>.supabase.co:5432). That direct host is IPv6-only, so on an IPv4-only host it is unreachable. When that happens gbrain now falls back to the pooler automatically (one stderr warning, then single-pool mode for the rest of the process) — but the pooler's ~2-min statement timeout can truncate very long migrations or bulk imports.

Fix: make the direct connection reachable over IPv4. Either set GBRAIN_DIRECT_DATABASE_URL to the Session pooler string (port 5432 on the pooler.supabase.com host, IPv4), or enable Supabase's IPv4 add-on. GBRAIN_DISABLE_DIRECT_POOL=1 skips the direct pool (and the fallback warning) entirely. Verify by running gbrain sync and checking that the page count in gbrain stats matches the syncable file count in the repo.

The Primitives

Always chain sync + embed:

gbrain sync --repo /path/to/brain && gbrain embed --stale
  • gbrain sync --repo <path> -- one-shot incremental sync. Detects changes via git diff, imports only what changed. For small changesets (<= 100 files), embeddings are generated inline during import — unless the inline cost gate intervenes: when the estimated embedding spend crosses the configured floor in a non-interactive session (cron, --json), sync auto-defers embeds to a capped embed-backfill job instead of spending silently. Either way the chunks get embedded; a deferred run just finishes asynchronously. See spend controls.
  • gbrain embed --stale -- backfill embeddings for any chunks that don't have them. Safety net for large syncs (>100 files) or prior --no-embed runs. On a keyless brain (installed with --no-embedding), a bare stale embed refuses cleanly — exit 0 with a stderr note — so this chain is safe to schedule on keyless installs; keyword search keeps working. Explicit embed requests (a slug, --slugs, --all) still exit 1 on a keyless brain.
  • gbrain sync --watch --repo <path> -- foreground polling loop, every 60s (configurable with --interval N). Embeds inline for small changesets. Exits after 5 consecutive failures, so run under a process manager or pair with a cron fallback.

Run every 5-30 minutes. Works with any cron scheduler.

gbrain sync --repo /data/brain && gbrain embed --stale

OpenClaw:

Name: gbrain-auto-sync
Schedule: */15 * * * *
Prompt: "Run: gbrain sync --repo /data/brain && gbrain embed --stale
  Log the result. If sync errors mention an unreachable host or timeout,
  the direct connection isn't reachable over IPv4 (set
  GBRAIN_DIRECT_DATABASE_URL to the Session pooler, or enable the IPv4 add-on)."

Hermes:

/cron add "*/15 * * * *" "Run gbrain sync --repo /data/brain &&
  gbrain embed --stale. Log the result." --name "gbrain-auto-sync"

Approach 2: Long-Lived Watcher

For near-instant sync (60s polling). Run under a process manager that auto-restarts on exit. Pair with a cron fallback since --watch exits on repeated failures.

gbrain sync --watch --repo /data/brain

Approach 3: Git Hook / Webhook

Triggers sync on push events for instant sync (<5s).

  • GitHub webhook: Set up the webhook to call gbrain sync --repo /data/brain && gbrain embed --stale. Verify X-Hub-Signature-256 against a shared secret.
  • Git post-receive hook: If the brain repo is on the same machine.

What Gets Synced

Sync only indexes "syncable" markdown files. These are excluded by design:

  • Hidden paths (.git/, .raw/, etc.) and vendored/generated trees (node_modules/, dist/, build/, venv/)
  • Meta files: README.md, index.md, schema.md, log.md, RESOLVER.md

Everything else is ordinary synced content — including ops/ (the bundled daily-task-manager skill files its canonical page under ops/tasks).

Sync is Idempotent — and Resumable

Concurrent runs are safe. Two syncs on the same commit no-op because content hashes match. If both a cron and --watch fire simultaneously, no conflict.

Long syncs also survive being killed: progress checkpoints into the database as files drain, so a killed or aborted run resumes from where it stopped, and the sync bookmark only advances on true completion. A progress-aware stall watchdog (GBRAIN_SYNC_STALL_ABORT_SECONDS, default 900, 0 disables) aborts a run that stops making forward progress and releases the per-source lock so the next gbrain sync picks up from the checkpoint. The checkpoint cadence and lock-steal grace are tunable via GBRAIN_SYNC_* / GBRAIN_LOCK_* env vars — incident-time escape hatches, not everyday knobs.

Tricky Spots

  1. Always chain sync + embed. Running gbrain sync without gbrain embed --stale leaves new chunks without embeddings. They exist in the database but are invisible to vector search. Always run both commands together. The && ensures embed only runs if sync succeeds.

  2. --watch polls, it doesn't stream. The --watch flag polls every 60s (configurable). It is not a filesystem watcher or git hook. It exits after 5 consecutive failures, so it needs a process manager (systemd, pm2) or a cron fallback to stay alive. Don't assume it runs forever.

  3. Webhook needs the server running. If you use a GitHub webhook for instant sync, the receiving server must be running and reachable. If the server is down when a push happens, that sync is missed. Pair webhooks with a cron fallback that catches anything the webhook missed.

  4. A single un-parseable file can't wedge all indexing. When a file fails to import (malformed YAML frontmatter, an unquoted colon, etc.), sync holds the bookmark and tells you exactly which file broke — a fresh failure fails closed so nothing is silently dropped. But a file that fails the same way GBRAIN_SYNC_AUTOSKIP_AFTER consecutive syncs (default 3, set 0 to disable) is auto-skipped so the rest of the brain keeps indexing past it. Skipped files don't disappear: gbrain doctor keeps warning until you fix or delete them, and fixing the file clears it on the next sync. A repository history rewrite still hard-blocks even with --skip-failed. Run gbrain sync --skip-failed to acknowledge a known-bad set yourself.

  5. Staleness can't read "fresh" forever. A source whose content stopped moving (or whose local clone vanished) used to report fresh indefinitely off the stored content timestamp. Content-relative staleness now ramps toward stale once wall-clock time since the last sync passes a ceiling (default 72h; GBRAIN_STALENESS_CEILING_HOURS to tune — it tracks GBRAIN_SYNC_FRESHNESS_FAIL_HOURS unless set). The ramp is gradual, so the warn tier still fires before the fail tier. gbrain status source rows carry hours_since_last_sync (raw wall-clock truth) alongside the threshold-relative staleness_hours that drives the fresh/stale class.

  6. Import checkpoints name the import target, not the caller's CWD. Interrupted gbrain import <dir> runs may leave ~/.gbrain/import-checkpoint.json so the next import can resume. The checkpoint dir is the absolute, resolved import target captured when import starts. It is not a cleanup instruction and it must not be re-derived from the process working directory. Checkpoints written by gbrain include schema_version: 1, owner: "gbrain", and kind: "import" so downstream tools can validate the contract before deciding whether to resume.

How to Verify

  1. Edit a file and search for the change. Edit a brain markdown file, commit, and push. Wait for the next sync cycle (cron interval or --watch poll). Run gbrain search "<text from the edit>". The updated content should appear in results. If it returns old content, sync failed.

  2. Compare page count to file count. Run gbrain stats and count the syncable markdown files in the brain repo. The page count in the database should match. If they diverge, files are being silently skipped (likely an unreachable direct connection on IPv4 — see the prerequisite above).

  3. Check embedded chunk count. In gbrain stats, the embedded chunk count should be close to the total chunk count. A large gap means gbrain embed --stale isn't running after sync, leaving chunks invisible to vector search.

  4. Gate on the daemon's heartbeat. If the built-in daemon runs your sync (gbrain autopilot --install), wire your scheduler's health check to gbrain autopilot --status. The exit code is the signal: 0 fresh (or nothing installed), 1 needs attention (stale heartbeat, never ran, or paused by a migration), 2 the daemon took itself out of rotation. --json emits the full report, including heartbeat_age_seconds. Status reads only the filesystem — no database connection — so it keeps working during the exact outages it exists to diagnose.

Part of the GBrain Skillpack.

Continue exploring589 Markdown documents in the local repository