ada reset
Reset Ada CLI to factory defaults
The reset command removes all configuration, data, and cached files, returning the CLI to a fresh installation state. This is useful for troubleshooting severe issues or starting over with a clean setup.
Overview
The reset command allows you to:
- Complete reset - Remove all CLI data and configuration
- Selective reset - Reset specific components only
- Preserve data - Keep certain data while resetting configuration
- Backup before reset - Automatic backup of important data
- Fresh start - Resolve configuration conflicts and corruption
⚠️ WARNING: Reset operations are destructive and cannot be undone. Always back up important data before resetting.
Usage
bash
ada reset [options]
Options
| Option | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
--all | Reset everything (config, data, sessions, auth) | false |
--config | Reset configuration only | false |
--data | Reset data and cache only | false |
--sessions | Clear all session history | false |
--auth | Clear authentication credentials | false |
--keep-workspaces | Preserve workspace data during reset | false |
--no-backup | Skip automatic backup | false |
--force | Skip confirmation prompts | false |
Interactive Examples
Complete Reset
$ ada reset --all
⚠️ CRITICAL WARNING: Complete CLI Reset
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This will permanently delete ALL Ada CLI data:
Configuration:
• Provider settings and API keys
• Workspace preferences
• Custom paths and settings
Data:
• 47 chat sessions (1.2 GB)
• 12 MCP sessions (450 MB)
• 8 agent executions (800 MB)
• Cached data (2.1 GB)
Authentication:
• Current session (user@example.com)
• Saved credentials
• API tokens (3 active)
Workspaces:
• personal-projects (12 sessions)
• work (8 sessions)
TOTAL DATA: ~4.5 GB will be deleted
This action CANNOT be undone!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Backup will be created at:
~/.lovelace-backup-2025-10-19-14-30/
Type 'reset everything' to confirm: reset everything
Creating backup...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✓ Backed up configuration
✓ Backed up sessions (47 files)
✓ Backed up workspaces (2 workspaces)
✓ Backed up authentication data
✓ Backup complete: ~/.lovelace-backup-2025-10-19-14-30/
Resetting CLI...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✓ Removed configuration files
✓ Cleared session history
✓ Removed workspace data
✓ Cleared authentication
✓ Removed cached data
✓ Reset permissions
✓ Ada CLI reset to factory defaults
Next steps:
1. Run: ada setup
→ Configure LLM providers
2. Run: lovelace auth login
→ Sign in to your account
3. Run: ada workspace create personal-projects
→ Recreate workspaces
Backup available at: ~/.lovelace-backup-2025-10-19-14-30/
Reset Configuration Only
$ ada reset --config
Reset Configuration
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This will reset:
• Provider settings (API keys preserved)
• Workspace preferences
• Custom paths
• General settings
Will NOT affect:
• Session history
• Authentication data
• Workspace files
Current configuration will be backed up.
Continue? (y/N): y
✓ Configuration backed up to ~/.lovelace/config.json.backup
✓ Configuration reset to defaults
Run 'ada setup' to reconfigure providers.
Clear Sessions Only
$ ada reset --sessions
Clear All Sessions
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This will permanently delete:
• 47 chat sessions (1.2 GB)
• 12 MCP sessions (450 MB)
• 8 agent executions (800 MB)
• All conversation history
• Session metadata
Configuration and authentication will NOT be affected.
Type 'clear sessions' to confirm: clear sessions
Clearing sessions...
✓ Removed 47 chat sessions
✓ Removed 12 MCP sessions
✓ Removed 8 agent executions
✓ Cleared session indices
✓ Freed 2.4 GB disk space
Session history cleared successfully.
Reset Authentication
$ ada reset --auth
Reset Authentication
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This will:
• Sign you out
• Remove saved credentials
• Revoke 3 active API tokens
• Clear authentication cache
You will need to sign in again.
Continue? (y/N): y
Resetting authentication...
✓ Session revoked
✓ Credentials cleared
✓ API tokens revoked (3 tokens)
✓ Authentication cache cleared
✓ Authentication reset successfully
Run 'lovelace auth login' to sign in again.
Reset with Workspace Preservation
$ ada reset --all --keep-workspaces
Complete Reset (Preserving Workspaces)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This will reset everything EXCEPT:
✓ Workspace files and structure
✓ Workspace-specific settings
Will delete:
• Configuration
• Session history
• Authentication
• Cached data
Workspaces to preserve:
• personal-projects (12 sessions, 2.1 GB)
• work (8 sessions, 1.4 GB)
Type 'reset but keep workspaces' to confirm: reset but keep workspaces
Creating backup...
✓ Backup complete
Resetting CLI (preserving workspaces)...
✓ Configuration reset
✓ Sessions cleared (but workspace metadata preserved)
✓ Authentication cleared
✓ Cache cleared
✓ Workspaces preserved
✓ Reset complete
✓ Workspace data intact
Run 'ada setup' and 'lovelace auth login' to reconfigure.
Force Reset (Skip Confirmation)
$ ada reset --config --force
⚠️ Force reset enabled - skipping confirmation
✓ Configuration backed up
✓ Configuration reset to defaults
Run 'ada setup' to reconfigure.
Reset Without Backup
$ ada reset --config --no-backup
⚠️ WARNING: No Backup
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
--no-backup specified: Configuration will NOT be backed up
This makes reset completely unrecoverable!
Are you absolutely sure? (yes/NO): yes
Resetting configuration (no backup)...
✓ Configuration reset
No backup created as requested.
Run 'ada setup' to reconfigure.
Reset Scope Comparison
| What Gets Reset | --all | --config | --data | --sessions | --auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Configuration | ✓ | ✓ | - | - | - |
| Provider Settings | ✓ | ✓ | - | - | - |
| API Keys | ✓ | - | - | - | ✓ |
| Session History | ✓ | - | - | ✓ | - |
| Workspace Data | ✓ | - | ✓ | - | - |
| Authentication | ✓ | - | - | - | ✓ |
| Cached Data | ✓ | - | ✓ | - | - |
| Logs | ✓ | - | ✓ | - | - |
Common Use Cases
Troubleshoot Configuration Corruption
Reset config when it's broken:
$ lovelace config show
Error: Invalid configuration
$ ada reset --config
✓ Configuration reset
$ ada setup
[Reconfigure from scratch]
Clean Up Disk Space
Remove old sessions and cached data:
$ ada reset --sessions --data
✓ Cleared 4.2 GB
✓ Disk space freed
Start Fresh After Testing
Reset everything after experimental changes:
$ ada reset --all
✓ Complete reset
✓ Factory defaults restored
Switch to New Account
Clear auth to sign in with different account:
$ ada reset --auth
✓ Signed out
✓ Credentials cleared
$ lovelace auth login
Email: newuser@example.com
[Sign in with new account]
Resolve Permission Issues
Reset and fix permissions:
$ ada reset --all
✓ All data removed
✓ Permissions reset
$ ada setup
[Fresh installation with correct permissions]
Backup Location
Automatic backups are created before reset:
~/.lovelace-backup-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM/
├── config.json # Configuration backup
├── sessions/ # Session history
│ ├── chat/
│ ├── mcp/
│ └── agents/
├── workspaces/ # Workspace data
│ ├── personal-projects/
│ └── work/
└── auth/ # Authentication data
└── credentials.enc
Backup Retention: Backups are kept indefinitely. Manually delete old backups to free space.
Restore from Backup
To restore from a backup:
bash
# Stop CLI operations
# Find backup
ls -la ~/.lovelace-backup-*/
# Restore configuration
cp ~/.lovelace-backup-2025-10-19-14-30/config.json ~/.lovelace/config.json
# Restore sessions
cp -r ~/.lovelace-backup-2025-10-19-14-30/sessions/* ~/.lovelace/sessions/
# Restore workspaces
cp -r ~/.lovelace-backup-2025-10-19-14-30/workspaces/* ~/.lovelace/workspaces/
# Verify
lovelace config show
ada sessions
What Gets Removed
Complete Reset (--all)
~/.lovelace/
├── config.json ✗ Deleted
├── auth/ ✗ Deleted
│ ├── credentials.enc ✗ Deleted
│ └── session.json ✗ Deleted
├── sessions/ ✗ Deleted
│ ├── chat/ ✗ Deleted
│ ├── mcp/ ✗ Deleted
│ └── agents/ ✗ Deleted
├── workspaces/ ✗ Deleted
├── data/ ✗ Deleted
├── logs/ ✗ Deleted
└── cache/ ✗ Deleted
Configuration Reset (--config)
~/.lovelace/
├── config.json ✗ Reset to defaults
├── auth/ ✓ Preserved
├── sessions/ ✓ Preserved
├── workspaces/ ✓ Preserved (settings reset)
└── data/ ✓ Preserved
Sessions Reset (--sessions)
~/.lovelace/
├── config.json ✓ Preserved
├── sessions/ ✗ Deleted
│ ├── chat/ ✗ Deleted
│ ├── mcp/ ✗ Deleted
│ └── agents/ ✗ Deleted
└── auth/ ✓ Preserved
Exit Codes
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
0 | Reset completed successfully |
1 | Reset failed or cancelled |
2 | Backup creation failed |
3 | Insufficient permissions |
Safety Features
Confirmation Prompts
- Type exact phrases for destructive operations
- Color-coded warnings for critical actions
- Dry-run preview of what will be deleted
- Size estimates for data removal
Automatic Backups
- Default behavior: Always create backup unless
--no-backup - Timestamped backups: Prevent overwriting previous backups
- Backup verification: Ensure backup succeeded before reset
- Restoration guide: Instructions included in backup
Permission Checks
- Write access verification before attempting reset
- Lock file prevention - won't reset if CLI is running
- Safe cleanup - proper file deletion without corruption
Troubleshooting
Reset Fails
Error: Cannot reset - CLI is currently running
Solution:
1. Close all Ada CLI sessions
2. Check for background processes: ps aux | grep lovelace
3. Kill if needed: pkill -f lovelace
4. Retry: ada reset
Backup Creation Fails
Error: Failed to create backup
Insufficient disk space
Solution:
1. Free up space: ada sessions clear --older-than 30
2. Skip backup (risky): ada reset --no-backup
3. Use custom backup location: export LOVELACE_BACKUP_DIR="/path/with/space"
Permission Denied
Error: Permission denied
Cannot remove ~/.lovelace/config.json
Solution:
$ chmod -R u+w ~/.lovelace/
$ ada reset
Partial Reset
Warning: Partial reset completed
Some files could not be removed
Check:
1. File permissions: ls -la ~/.lovelace/
2. Locked files: lsof | grep lovelace
3. Manually remove stubborn files
Related Commands
- lovelace config - Reconfigure after reset
- ada setup - Provider setup after reset
- lovelace auth - Re-authenticate after reset
- ada doctor - Verify installation after reset
Related Guides
- Getting Started Guide - Setup after reset
- Troubleshooting Guide - When to use reset
See the Command Reference for all available commands.