Recovery & Backup

ATLAST ECP provides built-in identity recovery and encrypted vault backup to protect against data loss.

Recovery Phrase

When you run atlast init, a 12-word recovery phrase is generated and displayed once:

🔑 RECOVERY PHRASE — write this down and store safely:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  1. marble        2. ocean         3. pencil        │
│  4. quiet         5. river         6. storm         │
│  7. tiger         8. umbrella      9. violet        │
│ 10. whale        11. xenon        12. yard          │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Write it down. It will NOT be shown again. This phrase can fully restore your agent identity (DID + signing keys).

Vault Backup

During atlast init, you can choose an encrypted backup location for your evidence content:

• iCloud Drive (macOS, auto-detected)
• Dropbox (auto-detected)
• OneDrive (auto-detected)
• Custom path (USB drive, NAS, any directory)

All content is encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key derived from your private key. The backup service (iCloud, Dropbox, etc.) cannot read your data.

Manual Backup

# Backup entire vault to a path
atlast backup --path /Volumes/MyUSB/ecp-backup

# Set permanent backup path
atlast config set vault_backup_path /path/to/backup

Disaster Recovery

If your computer is lost, stolen, or the hard drive fails:

# On new computer
pip install atlast-ecp

# Restore identity from recovery phrase
atlast recover
> Enter your 12-word recovery phrase:
> marble ocean pencil quiet river storm tiger umbrella violet whale xenon yard

✅ Identity recovered: did:ecp:a3f8c2...
✅ Downloaded 5000 records from server
✅ Vault restored: 5000 entries

What Gets Recovered

Data	Source	Status
Identity (DID + keys)	Recovery phrase	✅ Full
Record hashes + chain	Server (api.weba0.com)	✅ Full
On-chain anchoring	Base blockchain	✅ Permanent
Original content	Encrypted backup	✅ If backup was configured

Security Notes

• Recovery phrase = full access to your identity. Treat like a password.
• Never share your recovery phrase.
• Vault backups are encrypted — only your private key can decrypt them.
• The ATLAST server never has access to your original content or private key.