New Machine Migration

Transition runbook: moving the vault + project ecosystem to the new Intel 725 (32 GB RAM, RTX 5060 16 GB VRAM, 2 TB SSD, Win 11). Captures what was pushed, what was deferred, and the bootstrap sequence for the new machine.

Links: Working with Claude, iPad Claude Setup

What’s Pushed (as of 2026-05-01)

All work below lives on GitHub under chrisaacson69/. Cloning the vault + these repos restores the full working state.

Self-owned repos (clean, pushed)

Third-party (re-clone fresh on new machine)

Critical: The .claude/ Folder

GitHub does NOT carry ~/.claude/. This is the single most important migration artifact after the code:

Without this, the new machine starts cold — no continuity, no skills, no remembered context.

Chosen transfer method: encrypted 7z via Google Drive.

On the old machine:

# One-time install if needed
winget install --id 7zip.7zip --exact

# Run the backup script (prompts twice for password — write it down!)
powershell -File $HOME\bin\backup-claude.ps1

This produces ~/Downloads/claude-backup-<date>.7z (~60–80 MB compressed, AES-256, filenames encrypted). Drag-drop into drive.google.com.

The script excludes telemetry/, debug/, cache/, paste-cache/ — local-only noise.

Other transfer options if Drive is blocked:

Verify after copy: open Claude Code on the new machine, ask “what do you know about me?” — if it recalls the verification-layer thesis or the 6502 annotation series without prompting, memory transferred.

Deferred — Decide Later

These were intentionally NOT migrated. Revisit when needed:

Item Status Why deferred
~/source/repos/docs/repos/BattleTech (2.5M, no git) Local-only Pre-AI unit-compare project, reference for battletech-sim
~/source/repos/docs/repos/Drag (no git) Local-only Ahl BASIC port, small
~/source/repos/docs/repos/{Librosa,fetch_audio_features,music,plot_chroma,tunebat_scrape} Local-only Exploratory starter projects for camelot_from_youtube
~/source/repos/docs/repos/Monopoly-Bot-Richup.io Upstream + local mods Has unfinished richup-integration/. Needs gh repo fork first
~/source/repos/codebase No remote, 5 dirty Unknown content, needs review
~/car-finder, ~/ansel, ~/bin Local-only No git anywhere

The old machine isn’t going away soon, so any of these can be pulled across the home network when needed.

New Machine Bootstrap Sequence

1. Install core tools

Use --exact so winget doesn’t fuzzy-match (IDs are case-sensitive), and --source winget to skip the Microsoft Store source — on a fresh Win 11 box the msstore source can fail with 0x8a15005e (server cert mismatch) and abort the whole install with exit -1978335138:

winget install --id Git.Git --exact --source winget
winget install --id GitHub.cli --exact --source winget
winget install --id Anthropic.ClaudeCode --exact --source winget   # the CLI, NOT Anthropic.Claude (that's the desktop chat app)
winget install --id Python.Python.3.14 --exact --source winget     # 3.14 has full PyTorch support as of torch 2.11 (Mar 2026)
winget install --id OpenJS.NodeJS --exact --source winget          # or OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS for the long-term-support build
winget install --id yt-dlp.yt-dlp --exact --source winget          # pulls Deno + ffmpeg as deps

Optional / project-specific:

Finding more package IDs: winget search <keyword> lists matches with their IDs, or browse winget.run for a searchable web catalog.

2. GitHub auth

gh auth login
# choose HTTPS, browser flow

3. Clone the vault FIRST

The vault contains all the project pointers and this runbook itself.

mkdir $HOME\Vault -Force
cd $HOME
gh repo clone chrisaacson69/Vault Vault

4. Restore ~/.claude/

Download claude-backup-<date>.7z from Google Drive to ~\Downloads\, then extract:

winget install --id 7zip.7zip --exact   # if not already installed
cd $HOME\Downloads
& 'C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe' x claude-backup-<date>.7z -o$HOME\
# enter the password when prompted

After extracting, delete the Drive copy — it contains your settings + tokens.

Username slug rename — required if the user folder name changed: Claude Code names per-project memory folders after the cwd, so old machine’s C:\Users\Chris.Isaacson\Vault produces projects\C--Users-Chris-Isaacson-Vault\ while new machine’s C:\Users\chris\Vault expects projects\C--Users-chris-Vault\. Direct copies will NOT match new working directories — rename each C--Users-<old>-<...> slug to C--Users-<new>-<...> after the copy. The session UUID folders (e.g. 59019c89-2efa-...) are old subagent transcripts; safe to skip those entirely. Also skip stale settings.local.json (paths reference old user) and .credentials.json (re-auth on the new machine instead of importing).

Verify:

ls $HOME\.claude\projects
ls $HOME\.claude\projects\C--Users-*-Vault\memory

You should see MEMORY.md and a pile of *.md files.

5. Clone code repos

mkdir $HOME\source\repos\docs\repos -Force
cd $HOME\source\repos\docs\repos
$repos = @(
  'animation-studio','animation-studio-pod','batch-resize','battletech-sim',
  'camelot_from_youtube','CyborgDJ','masterofmagic','monopoly','monopyly',
  'moo1-opening-optimizer','order-playlist','pytorch-audio-learning',
  'pytorch-learning','slay','slay-c','triangular-arbitrage','youtube-migration'
)
foreach ($r in $repos) { gh repo clone "chrisaacson69/$r" }

# Third-party (pytorch source clone NOT needed — see Third-party section above)
gh repo clone yt-dlp/yt-dlp

6. Per-project setup

Most Python projects have requirements.txt or pyproject.toml. Standard pattern:

cd <project>
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -r requirements.txt

Notes:

7. Smoke test

# Vault works
cd $HOME\Vault
git pull

# Claude Code remembers you
claude
# ask: "what do you know about me?"

# A project runs
cd $HOME\source\repos\docs\repos\triangular-arbitrage
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m <entrypoint>

Things to Do BEFORE Leaving the Old Machine

Recovery Notes

Tags

meta-musing