avc snapshot

Walks the project, hashes every tracked file, and creates a content-addressed snapshot in the database. Identical files across snapshots share a single object — storage is automatically deduplicated.

Usage

avc snapshot "Before refactor"
avc snapshot "v1.2.0 release" --agent claude --notes "Passed tests"
avc snapshot "WIP" --json

Arguments

Argument	Required	Description
<label>	yes	Short human-readable description

Flags

Flag	Description
--agent <name>	Agent or user name creating the snapshot
--notes <text>	Free-form notes attached to the snapshot
--json	JSON output

JSON output

{
  "id": "snap-xyz789",
  "label": "v1.2.0 release",
  "timestamp": 1712289600,
  "agent_name": "claude",
  "files_changed": 42,
  "total_size": 1048576,
  "notes": "Passed tests",
  "branch_id": "br-main",
  "success": true
}

What gets included

• Every file in the project root, recursively
• Excluding patterns in .avcignore
• Excluding .avc/, .git/, .hg/, .svn/, .bzr/ always

The active branch determines which branch the snapshot lands on. Use avc branch list to check.

Branch-aware behaviour

If you’re on a non-main branch, AVC walks the workspace directory (.avc/workspaces/<branch>/), not the real project root. This is how branch isolation works — snapshots on a branch capture workspace state, the real project is untouched.

On main, the project root is walked directly.