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Overview

cloudstic setup workstation is a guided onboarding flow that gets a new machine backed up quickly. Instead of manually crafting each profile with cloudstic profile new, it:
  1. Suggests common workstation folders that exist on this machine (Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Videos, Music, developer project folders)
  2. Discovers attached portable/external drives (the same logic as cloudstic source discover)
  3. Resolves or helps you pick a store to attach the generated profiles to
  4. Builds a review-first plan — nothing is written until you confirm it
  5. Applies the plan as a single batch write to profiles.yaml
Workstation setup is workstation-first: it covers local folders and portable drives. It doesn’t set up cloud sources (Google Drive, OneDrive) or SFTP — configure those with cloudstic profile new as usual.

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Basic Usage

Interactive by default:
Preview only, no writes:

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Dry-Run vs. Apply

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Dry-Run

-dry-run builds and prints the onboarding plan without any side effects. It does not create the config directory, mutate profiles.yaml, initialize a store, or resolve/print secret values. Use it to see what setup would do before committing.

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Interactive Apply (default)

Without -dry-run, Cloudstic walks you through:
  1. Store resolution — if no store exists yet, you’re prompted to create one (reusing the same flow as cloudstic store new, including encryption setup). If exactly one store is configured, it’s used automatically. If multiple stores exist, you’re prompted to choose one (or pass -store-ref).
  2. Plan review — for each proposed profile, you confirm creation; if a profile name collides with an existing one, you choose to update the existing profile, create it under a new name, or skip it entirely.
  3. Final confirmation — a summary table and coverage report are printed, then you confirm the save.

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Non-Interactive Apply

Pass -yes to accept all default selections without prompting (requires a store to already exist, or -store-ref to be given):
If setup can’t prompt (no interactive terminal) and -yes isn’t set, it fails rather than guessing.

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Command Flags

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boolean
default:"false"
Preview the generated onboarding plan without writing configuration. Side-effect free: no config directory creation, no store initialization, no secret resolution, no profiles.yaml writes.
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boolean
default:"false"
Accept default plan selections without interactive prompts. Combine with -store-ref when more than one store is configured.
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boolean
default:"false"
Write the onboarding plan as JSON instead of human-readable tables. Implies non-interactive plan output (the plan is printed, not applied interactively).
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string
Path to the profiles YAML file to read and write.
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string
Existing store reference to attach to generated profiles. Required (or resolved interactively) when more than one store is configured; falls back to the single existing store automatically when only one exists.

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What Gets Suggested

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Folders

Cloudstic suggests folders that actually exist on the machine, grouped by category:
  • Core documents — ~/Documents
  • Desktop and workspace — ~/Desktop
  • Media libraries — ~/Pictures, ~/Videos, ~/Music (skipped on Windows)
  • Developer projects — any of ~/Projects, ~/projects, ~/code, ~/src that exist
~/Downloads is detected but intentionally listed under “skipped intentionally” rather than proposed as a profile, since it’s typically low-signal/transient data.

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Portable Drives

Any portable/external drive found by the discovery logic (see cloudstic source discover) is proposed as its own profile, tagged portable in addition to workstation.

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Generated Profiles

Each selected folder or drive becomes a profile:
  • Name: derived from the folder/drive name; if that name is already taken, Cloudstic prefixes it with the hostname, then appends a numeric suffix if still colliding
  • Source: local:<path>
  • Store: the resolved store reference
  • Tags: workstation, plus portable for drives

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Example Transcript

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Dry-Run Example

No prompts, no writes — the command exits after printing the plan.

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Coverage Review

Every plan (dry-run or applied) reports a coverage summary:
  • Protected now — folders/drives that will produce (or already have) a profile
  • Skipped intentionally — suggestions that were deselected, or low-signal paths like Downloads
  • Not available now — reserved for portable drives seen previously but not currently mounted
  • Warnings — for example, when a requested -store-ref doesn’t exist, or when multiple stores are configured and none was specified

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How It Composes

cloudstic setup workstation is a thin, review-first layer over existing primitives — it doesn’t replace them:
  • Uses the same discovery logic as cloudstic source discover to find portable drives
  • Reuses the cloudstic store new flow (including encryption configuration) when no store exists yet
  • Writes profiles in the same shape as cloudstic profile new; generated profiles can be edited afterward with profile new/profile show like any other profile

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See Also