stack/docs/guides/migrate-tier.md

Migrating to the Federated Tier

Step-by-step guide to migrate from local (PGlite) or standalone (PostgreSQL without pgvector) to federated (PostgreSQL 17 + pgvector + Valkey).

When to migrate

Migrate to federated tier when:

• Scaling from single-user to multi-user deployments
• Adding vector embeddings or RAG features
• Running Mosaic across multiple hosts
• Requires distributed task queueing and caching
• Moving to production with high availability

Prerequisites

• Federated stack running and healthy (see Federated Tier Setup)
• Source database accessible and empty target database at the federated URL
• Backup of source database (recommended before any migration)

Dry-run first

Always run a dry-run to validate the migration:

mosaic storage migrate-tier --to federated \
  --target-url postgresql://mosaic:mosaic@localhost:5433/mosaic \
  --dry-run

Expected output (partial example):

[migrate-tier] Analyzing source tier: pglite
[migrate-tier] Analyzing target tier: federated
[migrate-tier] Precondition: target is empty ✓
  users: 5 rows
  teams: 2 rows
  conversations: 12 rows
  messages: 187 rows
  ... (all tables listed)
[migrate-tier] NOTE: Source tier has no pgvector support. insights.embedding will be NULL on all migrated rows.
[migrate-tier] DRY-RUN COMPLETE (no data written). 206 total rows would be migrated.

Review the output. If it shows an error (e.g., target not empty), address it before proceeding.

Run the migration

When ready, run without --dry-run:

mosaic storage migrate-tier --to federated \
  --target-url postgresql://mosaic:mosaic@localhost:5433/mosaic \
  --yes

The --yes flag skips the confirmation prompt (required in non-TTY environments like CI).

The command will:

1. Acquire an advisory lock (blocks concurrent invocations)
2. Copy data from source to target in dependency order
3. Report rows migrated per table
4. Display any warnings (e.g., null vector embeddings)

What gets migrated

All persistent, user-bound data is migrated in dependency order:

• users, teams, team_members — user and team ownership
• accounts — OAuth provider tokens (durable credentials)
• projects, agents, missions, tasks — all project and agent definitions
• conversations, messages — all chat history
• preferences, insights, agent_logs — preferences and observability
• provider_credentials — stored API keys and secrets
• tickets, events, skills, routing_rules, appreciations — auxiliary records

Full order is defined in code (MIGRATION_ORDER in packages/storage/src/migrate-tier.ts).

What gets skipped and why

Three tables are intentionally not migrated:

Table	Reason
sessions	TTL'd auth sessions from the old environment; they will fail JWT verification on the new target
verifications	One-time tokens (email verify, password reset) that have either expired or been consumed
admin_tokens	Hashed tokens bound to the old environment's secret keys; must be re-issued

Note on accounts and provider_credentials: These durable credentials ARE migrated because they are user-bound and required for resuming agent work on the target environment. After migration to a multi-tenant federated deployment, operators may want to audit or wipe these if users are untrusted or credentials should not be shared.

Idempotency and concurrency

The migration is idempotent:

• Re-running is safe (uses ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE internally)
• Ideal for retries on transient failures
• Concurrent invocations are blocked by a Postgres advisory lock; the second caller will wait

If a previous run is stuck, check for advisory locks:

SELECT * FROM pg_locks WHERE locktype='advisory';

If you need to force-unlock (dangerous):

SELECT pg_advisory_unlock(<lock_id>);

Verify the migration

After migration completes, spot-check the target:

# Count rows on a few critical tables
psql postgresql://mosaic:mosaic@localhost:5433/mosaic -c \
  "SELECT 'users' as table, COUNT(*) FROM users UNION ALL
   SELECT 'conversations' as table, COUNT(*) FROM conversations UNION ALL
   SELECT 'messages' as table, COUNT(*) FROM messages;"

Verify a known user or project exists by ID:

psql postgresql://mosaic:mosaic@localhost:5433/mosaic -c \
  "SELECT id, email FROM users WHERE email='<your-email>';"

Ensure vector embeddings are NULL (if source was PGlite) or populated (if source was postgres + pgvector):

psql postgresql://mosaic:mosaic@localhost:5433/mosaic -c \
  "SELECT embedding IS NOT NULL as has_vector FROM insights LIMIT 5;"

Rollback

There is no in-place rollback. If the migration fails:

1. Restore the target database from a pre-migration backup
2. Investigate the failure logs
3. Rerun the migration

Always test migrations in a staging environment first.