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Moving to a new Mac

Migration Assistant copies your whole home folder to the new Mac, and Hansard comes with it: the archive, the settings, the Personal Sync backup it writes to, and the sign-ins the router and your agents use. That copy also carries the old Mac’s identity. If both Macs keep running Hansard as that one device, they write the same backup and use the same sign-ins, and they get in each other’s way. A restored backup on a Windows or Linux computer brings the same copy.

App
Setup → This computer
CLI
hansard device

What Hansard does on the copy

Section titled “What Hansard does on the copy”

Hansard binds its identity to the computer’s hardware. When it starts on other hardware, it knows it is a copy. It keeps importing, and the archive and the app keep working, but it waits before it does anything the other computer also does:

  • It uploads nothing to Personal Sync or your Teams.
  • It doesn’t start the account router, which would renew the copied sign-ins.
  • It doesn’t start remote hosting under the old computer’s host identity.
  • Teammates’ agents cannot reach it.

The app shows the copy at the top of the window and asks once, in setup: is this a new computer, or does it replace the old one?

A copy made before Hansard bound the identity to the hardware is found through your Personal Sync backup instead. When the backup holds something this computer didn’t upload, Hansard holds in the same way.

Keep both computers

Section titled “Keep both computers”

Choose this when you’ll keep using the old computer. The new one gets an identity of its own: a new name, a new place in your Personal Sync backup, a new remote-control identity, and a new member key in each of your Teams, which the copied key introduces to teammates.

  1. Open the alert at the top of the window, choose Keep both, and give this computer a name, for example the name of the model. Or run:

    Terminal window
    hansard device adopt --new --name "New MacBook" --yes

    If Hansard didn’t find the copy itself, add --copied-at with the last time the old computer ran Hansard.

  2. Pair again any device you paired for remote control with the old computer.

  3. On the old computer, update Hansard before you open it, and follow Sign in again on the old computer.

Conversations that were last active before the copy stay the old computer’s. They keep its name in the app, and the new computer never uploads them as its own. Conversations that ran on the new computer after the copy, including old conversations you continued there, take the new computer’s name.

The new computer leaves a note in your backup with what it uploaded under the old identity. When the old computer next starts Hansard, it finds that note, takes those uploads as its own, and carries on as before.

Sign in again on the old computer

Section titled “Sign in again on the old computer”

OpenAI and Anthropic renew a sign-in by replacing it. Once the new computer has renewed a copied sign-in, the old computer’s copy is used up, and presenting it can sign you out on both computers.

When the old computer starts the updated Hansard, it parks Hansard’s own copies of those sign-ins, in the router and in the logins Hansard saved for your accounts, and asks you to sign in to each again in Accounts. To keep the sign-ins on the old computer instead and sign in again on the new one, add --sign-ins leave to hansard device adopt --new. Hansard never changes the sign-ins that Codex, Claude Code, and other agents keep for themselves.

To see the parked sign-ins, or to put them back if you chose the wrong computer:

Terminal window
hansard device sign-ins
hansard device sign-ins --restore

Replace the old computer

Section titled “Replace the old computer”

Choose this when the new computer takes over and the old one stops running Hansard. The new computer keeps the identity and continues the backup from where the old one left it. Open the alert at the top of the window and choose Replace followed by the old computer’s name, or run:

Terminal window
hansard device adopt --replace --yes

Then quit Hansard on the old computer, or erase it. If it starts Hansard again, it finds that another computer continued its backup and waits until you choose there too.

Check where things stand

Section titled “Check where things stand”
Terminal window
hansard device status

status names this computer, says whether it is a copy, and lists the copied history it keeps for another computer and any sign-ins parked for a fresh sign-in.