Reference

Vaults

Local storage, active-vault behavior, recent-vault metadata, backup requirements, and MCP path selection.

A vault is a local SQLite database containing Claimframe’s domain data, schema, provenance, and workflow state. The active vault supplies the context for capture, queries, graph recall, review, and export.

Contents

A vault contains:

  • Entities and predicate schema
  • Transactions and datoms
  • Assertion provenance and review metadata
  • Transcript intake and review state
  • Saved queries
  • Adopted vocabulary releases and imported content
  • Full-text search data derived from rendered assertions

The core stored unit is a datom. The interface renders assertion groups from the datoms created by a capture transaction.

Files and display names

Claimframe can create or open vault files with .sqlite3, .sqlite, .db, or .cfvault extensions. A renamed vault display name is application metadata; it does not rename or move the underlying file.

Recent-vault tracking and display names are stored in application settings outside the vault. Opening a vault in a new window lets two vaults remain open at the same time.

Backup

The vault file is the authoritative local store. Include it in the project’s encrypted backup process. Close Claimframe and pause other writers before taking a simple manual file copy so the copy represents a consistent point in time.

The database uses SQLite write-ahead logging when accessed by Claimframe integrations. Copying only the main database while a writer is active can omit recent changes still represented by SQLite sidecar files.

Local MCP server

The standalone Rust MCP server uses the same vault core and normalized SQLite schema as the desktop application. It does not require Python or a running desktop app, and it can share a vault with the desktop application. Select the vault path in this order:

  1. Pass --vault /path/to/vault.sqlite3.
  2. If omitted, set CLAIMFRAME_VAULT.
  3. Otherwise, the server uses .claimframe/vault.sqlite3 relative to its working directory.

The active desktop vault path is shown in application settings. The MCP process and desktop application use WAL mode and a busy timeout to coordinate access to the same local file.