Data folder

Everything Startica knows lives in one folder on your computer: products, intel, conversations, drafts, roadmap, metrics, job history and encrypted credentials, plus the posting window’s sign-ins. Nothing is stored on a Startica server. This page covers where the folder is, what is in it, and how to back it up, restore it, start over or move it.

Location

OS	Default folder
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Startica
Windows	%APPDATA%\Startica (usually C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Startica)
Linux	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Startica, or ~/.config/Startica when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset

This is the same folder Electron uses for an app named “Startica”, so the desktop app and the development servers (yarn dev:desktop, yarn dev:desktop-web) share one database by default.

Overriding it

Set STARTICA_DATA_DIR to use another folder. The folder is created if it doesn’t exist.

STARTICA_DATA_DIR="$HOME/startica-test" yarn dev:desktop

The smoke tests and yarn eval always use a fresh temporary folder, so they never touch your real data. See Environment variables.

What’s inside

File	What it is
startica.db	The SQLite database. Everything Startica stores, including encrypted secrets.
startica.db-wal	SQLite write-ahead log (the database runs in WAL mode). Holds recent writes not yet merged into startica.db. Part of the database while the app runs.
startica.db-shm	SQLite shared-memory index for the WAL. Recreated as needed.
dev-secret.key	Only created when the server runs outside the desktop app (yarn dev:desktop-web). A random AES-256 key (file mode 0600) that encrypts secrets in that mode.
startica-mode.json	Only created once you open the demo. Says whether Startica starts in demo mode: {"demo":true} or {"demo":false}. See Demo mode.
updates.json	Only created once you change Check for Updates Automatically in the tray menu. {"auto":false} turns automatic update checks off; a missing file means on. See Updating.
ads/	Only created once you make an ad creative or upload a logo. Ad pictures, rendered ad images and product logos. See Ad images.
demo/	Only created once you open the demo. The demo’s own data folder, with its own startica.db, holding the Fieldnote sample product.
Partitions/posting	The posting window’s own browser profile: your sign-ins to X, Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, Bluesky, your Mastodon server and any Discourse forums for Posting with Startica. Deleting it signs you out of them. See Posting sign-ins.
Other files and folders	Electron’s own browser-profile data for the app window (cookies, caches, preferences). Safe to lose.

The database schema is upgraded automatically when the app starts (migrations run on every launch).

Downloaded updates aren’t kept in the data folder but in your user cache folder, under @starticadesktop-updater: ~/Library/Caches on macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA% on Windows, ~/.cache (or $XDG_CACHE_HOME) on Linux. Deleting it only means the next update downloads again.

Ad images

Ad creatives keep their images as files, not in the database:

Path	What it is
ads/creatives/<creative id>/picture.png (or .jpg, .webp)	The creative’s picture: drawn by the AI (PNG) or the file you uploaded, as uploaded. At most one per creative.
ads/creatives/<creative id>/1x1.png, 4x5.png, 9x16.png, 1.91x1.png	The rendered ad in each size the platform takes. A size is .jpg instead when the PNG was over the platform’s file limit.
ads/logos/<product id>.png (or .jpg, .webp)	The product’s logo for templates, one per product.

The database keeps each creative’s settings, the prompt its picture was drawn from, and the list of rendered sizes. Deleting a creative deletes its folder; deleting a campaign deletes the folders of all its creatives. Remove next to the logo deletes the logo file.

How secrets are encrypted

Secrets are the AI API keys (Anthropic and OpenAI), the X API token, GitHub and GitLab tokens, pasted connection credentials and the product database’s read-only connection URL. They are stored in the secrets table, encrypted. Everything else in startica.db is plain text.

Mode	Cipher	Where the key lives
Desktop app (yarn dev:desktop or installed)	Electron safeStorage	The OS keychain: macOS Keychain, Windows DPAPI (tied to your Windows user), Linux libsecret.
Browser dev mode (yarn dev:desktop-web)	AES-256-GCM	dev-secret.key in the data folder.

Posting sign-ins

When you sign in to a site in the posting window (X, Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, Bluesky, your Mastodon server or a Discourse forum), the site’s cookies are kept in a separate browser profile, Electron’s persistent partition persist:posting. It’s separate from your normal browser and from the app’s main window, and it holds only what the sites themselves store (cookies, local storage, cache). Startica never stores your passwords.

The partition is always in Electron’s own profile folder, which is the default data folder above, even if you set STARTICA_DATA_DIR:

OS	Posting sign-ins
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Startica/Partitions/posting
Windows	%APPDATA%\Startica\Partitions\posting
Linux	~/.config/Startica/Partitions/posting (or under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME)

The installed app and yarn dev:desktop use this same partition. The desktop smoke test doesn’t: it runs the posting window in a throwaway in-memory session, so it never touches your sign-ins.

Sign out of a site

• One site: open a Post… window for that site and sign out on the site’s own page, as you would in a browser.
• All sites: quit Startica (Quit Startica in the tray menu), then delete the Partitions/posting folder. The next Post… asks you to sign in again.

Back up

A backup is a copy of the database. Pick one of two ways.

Quit, then copy. Choose Quit Startica from the tray (menu-bar) icon; closing the window is not enough, the app keeps running in the tray. Then copy startica.db (and startica.db-wal and startica.db-shm if they still exist) or the whole folder.

While running, with the sqlite3 CLI. SQLite’s online backup gives a consistent single-file copy without quitting:

sqlite3 "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Startica/startica.db" ".backup '$HOME/startica-backup.db'"

To keep your ad images, also copy the ads folder. Without it, a restored creative keeps its settings and prompt but shows no images: upload or draw the picture again, then render it.

A backup includes the encrypted secrets, but they only decrypt on the same computer and user account (see Moving to another computer).

Restore

1. Quit Startica (Quit Startica in the tray menu).
2. In the data folder, delete startica.db-wal and startica.db-shm if present.
3. Replace startica.db with your backup, keeping the name startica.db.
4. Open Startica. Migrations bring an older backup up to the current schema.

Restore into the same or a newer version of Startica. Restoring a backup made by a newer version into an older one is untested.

Start fresh

Quit Startica, then delete or rename the data folder (renaming keeps it as a backup). The next launch creates an empty database, a new workspace and the default AI model routing, and opens the welcome wizard, as on a first launch. See First run.

To reset only a test setup, point STARTICA_DATA_DIR at an empty folder instead.

The keychain entry from the old install is left behind. It is harmless; Startica reuses it.

Demo mode

In the desktop app, Look around with a sample product first on the welcome page restarts Startica in demo mode. See Try the demo.

• The demo uses demo/ inside the data folder (inside STARTICA_DATA_DIR if you set it) as its own data folder. On its first start it’s filled with the Fieldnote sample product. Your own startica.db isn’t opened.
• startica-mode.json in the data folder remembers the mode, so Startica starts in the demo again until you click Leave demo.
• No background jobs run in the demo, and Post… is hidden.

To start the demo over, quit Startica and delete the demo folder. To get out of the demo without the app (for example if it won’t start), quit Startica and delete startica-mode.json, or change it to {"demo":false}.

Backups and moves only need your own startica.db; the demo folder and the mode file can be left out.

Demo data

To load the fictional demo product, Fieldnote, into a separate folder without the desktop app (for example for a browser run), use the seed script. It makes no AI calls.

STARTICA_DATA_DIR=/tmp/startica-demo yarn seed:demo
STARTICA_DATA_DIR=/tmp/startica-demo yarn dev:desktop-web

STARTICA_DATA_DIR is required, so the demo never lands in your real data folder by accident; use an absolute path. The script refuses to run if the database already has a product. With --force it first deletes every product and its data (plus conversations, job and AI history), keeping settings, secrets and AI model routing.

Moving to another computer

1. On the old computer, make a backup as above.
2. Install Startica on the new computer and open it once, then quit it.
3. Restore the backup into the new computer’s data folder, with the ads folder if you copied it.
4. Re-enter every secret, because the old keychain key is not on the new computer:

Secret	Where to re-enter
AI API keys (Anthropic, OpenAI)	Settings → General → AI → Change keys or budget
Stripe key, GA4 and Search Console service-account keys, Umami and Bing API keys	Settings → Products → Connections → Replace key or Change (Search Console, Umami)
Product database	Remove the Product database connection with its trash icon, then Set up again: write the SQL, run it (it sets a new password for the read-only login) and paste the connection string. See Product database. A view and login of your own: Use a URL instead.

Until a secret is re-entered, the jobs that need it fail and the error is shown on the connection or on the System page. Everything that isn’t a secret (products, intel, inbox, drafts, roadmap, content, metrics history) moves over as is. See Settings.

Related

• Privacy and security: what leaves your computer and when.
• Background jobs: queued jobs are stored in the database too and resume on the next launch.