Updating

Before upgrading

1. Back up your data: snippbot reset --list-backups — or manually copy ~/.snippbot/
2. Check the changelog for breaking changes
3. Stop the daemon before upgrading

Upgrade

The recommended way to upgrade is the built-in snippbot upgrade command. It resolves the latest version from PyPI’s JSON API (which is never stale, unlike pip’s cached simple index), stops the daemon, and installs with cache-busting — so you don’t have to remember the right pip/pipx flags:

snippbot upgrade            # Upgrade to the latest version
snippbot upgrade --check    # Just check whether a newer version exists
snippbot start              # Restart the daemon

It auto-detects whether you installed via pipx or a pip virtualenv and runs the right command for you. See the snippbot upgrade reference for all options.

Stale-version gotcha

If pipx upgrade snippbot ever reports “already up to date” but you know a newer release exists, that’s pip’s cached simple index serving a stale version. snippbot upgrade avoids this entirely by reading the version from PyPI’s JSON API and pinning it with --no-cache-dir.

Upgrading manually

If you prefer to run the package manager yourself:

pipx

# Stop the daemon
snippbot stop

# Upgrade (add --pip-args=--no-cache-dir if pipx serves a stale version)
pipx upgrade --pip-args=--no-cache-dir snippbot

# Restart
snippbot start

pip (venv)

If you installed into a virtual environment instead of pipx, upgrade with that venv’s pip:

snippbot stop
~/.snippbot-venv/bin/pip install --upgrade --no-cache-dir snippbot
snippbot start

Docker

Upcoming — not yet supported

Docker deployment is a planned feature and not yet available. These steps describe how upgrades will work once the published image ships. See Docker deployment.

# Pull latest image
docker compose pull

# Recreate containers
docker compose up -d

# View logs to verify startup
docker compose logs -f snippbot

Verify the upgrade

snippbot --version
snippbot status
curl http://localhost:18781/health
snippbot doctor

Database migrations

Snippbot applies database migrations automatically on startup. If a migration fails:

# Check logs for migration errors
tail -50 ~/.snippbot/logs/daemon.log | grep -i migrat

# Restore from pre-upgrade backup if needed
snippbot reset --list-backups
snippbot reset --restore <backup-name>

Note

Database backups are created automatically before migrations run. Check ~/.snippbot/backups/ for the pre-upgrade snapshot.

Rollback

If the new version has a critical bug, roll back by pinning an older version:

# Easiest — let snippbot upgrade pin the version for you
snippbot upgrade --version 0.4.1 --yes

Or run the package manager directly:

# pipx — reinstall pinned to a specific version
pipx install snippbot==0.4.1 --force

# pip (venv) — install a specific version
~/.snippbot-venv/bin/pip install snippbot==0.4.1

Always restore from a pre-upgrade backup when rolling back to avoid schema mismatches:

snippbot stop
snippbot reset --restore pre-upgrade-<timestamp>
snippbot start