Profiles and vaults

A profile is one memory store on your machine: a vault directory at a path you chose, plus the settings needed to open it. Everything else in Kaleidoscope points at a profile by name.

Create a profile

kaleidoscope init --root /absolute/path/to/your/kaleidoscope-memory --profile default
kaleidoscope init --root /absolute/path --profile work --durability durable-local

--root is the vault directory. It must be an absolute path; a missing or invalid root is refused rather than created for you, so nothing is silently written to the wrong place. --profile names the profile, and default is the name every other command assumes if you do not say otherwise.

--durability chooses how hard the engine works to get writes onto the disk. process-local is the ordinary choice. durable-local asks for the stronger guarantee and is refused unless the engine can prove the platform supports it, rather than being accepted and quietly downgraded.

List, inspect, switch, remove

kaleidoscope profile list
kaleidoscope profile show default
kaleidoscope profile use work
kaleidoscope profile remove work

profile list shows the profiles this machine knows and which one is active. profile show prints one of them. profile use changes which profile is active for commands that do not name one.

profile remove forgets a profile. It does not delete the vault the profile pointed at — your memory is a directory on your disk and it stays there. Getting rid of the memory itself is a separate, deliberate act; see Operations.

Bind a profile to an account

kaleidoscope profile account show [NAME]
kaleidoscope profile account bind ACCOUNT_UUID [NAME]
kaleidoscope profile account unbind [NAME]

These write a local, non-secret account reference into a profile and nothing more. They do not start the engine, contact any service, touch a vault, or store a credential. They are the only account-shaped commands that work offline, because they never leave your machine. The rest are on the account page.

What a profile is not

It is not a copy of your memory, and it is not a credential store. Deleting a profile, switching profiles, or reinstalling Kaleidoscope leaves every byte of every vault exactly where it was.