`ark load`

Restore Ark from a .ark.db snapshot, or scaffold fresh if no snapshot exists.

Synopsis

ark load [OPTIONS]

Description

ark load is the inverse of ark unload. It picks one of two paths:

.ark.db exists → restore every captured file under owned dirs, every managed block, and every Ark-owned hook entry. The snapshot file is consumed (deleted) on success.
.ark.db absent → behave like ark init with WriteMode::Force.

In both paths, after content is in place, each installed platform's hook entry is re-applied to the current canonical shape — so a snapshot from an older Ark version restores cleanly even if the hook schema (e.g. timeout value) has shifted. Older snapshots that pre-date the per-entry hook_bodies capture deserialize successfully (defaulting to empty) and the canonical entries are still re-applied.

Flags

Flag	Description
`--dir <path>`	Target directory. Without `--force`, walks ancestors looking for `.ark/`. With `--force`, treats `--dir` as the target.
`--force`	Wipe the live footprint (owned dirs) before restoring. Required if `.ark/` already exists.

Refusal

Without --force, ark load refuses if .ark/ already exists at the target — the implication is that you want to merge restored state into a live install, which is more error-prone than starting fresh.

Examples

# Round-trip: capture, then restore.
ark unload
ark load                  # restores from .ark.db (which `ark unload` wrote)

# Re-load over an existing install.
ark load --force          # wipes .ark/ then restores

# Initial bootstrap from a snapshot file.
ark load --dir /path/to/project --force

Round-trip preservation

User-edited and user-added files inside owned dirs (.ark/tasks/..., custom slash commands) survive unload → load losslessly. The snapshot captures full file contents; managed blocks (the parts of CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md between  and ) are captured separately and re-spliced on restore.

User siblings of the Ark hook entry (e.g. a custom PreToolUse hook in .claude/settings.json) survive a round-trip too: unload only surgically removes the Ark SessionStart entry and load only surgically re-adds it. Other top-level keys and sibling hook entries stay on disk untouched.