Vault structure

Your vault is a folder. Everything in it is plain text you can read, edit, grep, version, and sync. There is no database and no binary blob format — that’s the design.

The two halves

Prevail keeps a hard line between your data (the vault) and machine-local state (secrets, caches, the session DB).

	Location	Synced?
Vault	Wherever you chose (e.g. ~/life-vault/)	Yes — sync this
Machine-local	~/.prevail/	No — never sync this

Caution

~/.prevail/ holds Telegram tokens, OAuth refresh tokens, and your session database. If you sync your vault with git/iCloud/Tailscale, sync <vault>/ only and exclude ~/.prevail/. See Syncing your vault.

Inside the vault

• AGENTS-operating.md the operating manual agents read (override here)
• Directorywealth/ a domain

  • state.md
  • QUICKSTART.md
  • PROMPTS.md
  • config.md
  • Directory00_current/

    • …
  • Directory01_prior/

    • …
  • Directory02_briefs/

    • …
  • Directoryskills/

    • …
  • Directory_log/

    • …
  • Directory_journal/

    • …
• Directoryhealth/ another domain

  • …
• Directorytax/

  • …
• Directorybenchmark/ the canonical test suite

  • README.md
  • Directoryquestions/

    • …
  • Directoryattachments/

    • …
  • Directoryruns/

    • …
• .schedule.json cron-style recurring commands
• .briefings.json scheduled domain briefings

• Domains are the bulk of it — one folder per area of your life. → Domains
• benchmark/ holds the canonical question suite and run results. → Benchmarks
• AGENTS-operating.md is the operating manual prepended to agent calls. Edit it to change how agents treat your vault.
• .schedule.json / .briefings.json persist your scheduled work. → Briefings

Inside ~/.prevail/

• config.json vault path, per-domain settings, chair pin
• telegram.json bot token + chat-ID allowlist (chmod 0600)
• mcp.json auto-generated MCP bearer token
• debug.log diagnostics (tail with prevail doctor --debug)
• Directorysessions/ SQLite chat history (FTS5 search index)

  • …
• Directoryconnectors/ per-connector auth + synced data

  • …
• Directoryapps/ community connector definitions

  • …

This directory is created on first run and managed by Prevail. You rarely touch it directly — prevail doctor reads it for you.

Why plain markdown

• You own it. No export step, no lock-in. It’s already files.
• Edit anywhere. Obsidian, VS Code, vim, the cockpit’s e key — they all work because it’s just text.
• Grep-able. grep -r "mortgage" ~/life-vault/ does what you’d hope.
• Diffable. git log on your vault is a literal history of your decisions.
• Sync-agnostic. iCloud, Dropbox, git, Tailscale Drive — anything that moves files moves your vault.