sync

nervapack sync

Incrementally update the graph after code changes — without re-ingesting the whole project.

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Synopsis

nervapack sync [PATH]

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Description

sync diffs your git working tree against the last commit, finds the files that changed, and surgically updates only those files in the graph and vector store.

• Removes old nodes and ChromaDB vectors for each changed file.
• Re-parses the updated file with tree-sitter.
• Re-embeds the new entities into ChromaDB (batched in one call per file).
• Re-binds any markdown docs linked to the changed file.
• Saves the updated graph once at the end.

A full ingest on a large project can take minutes. sync turns that into a 2–5 second surgical update per file.

!!! warning "Requires git" sync uses GitPython to detect changed files. Your project must be a git repository.

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Options

Argument	Description	Default
PATH	Path to the repository root	. (current directory)

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Examples

# Sync after editing files
nervapack sync .

# Sync a different project
nervapack sync /path/to/project

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Expected Output

Syncing changed files with NervaPack graph...
Found 3 changed files.
Updated AST for src/graph/builder.py
Updated AST for src/graph/retrieval.py
Removed old_module.py
Sync complete.

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When to Use sync vs ingest

Situation	Command
First-time setup	nervapack ingest .
After editing 1–20 files	nervapack sync .
After a large refactor (many renames)	nervapack ingest .
After adding a new language/directory	nervapack ingest .
Graph corrupt or wrong data ingested	nervapack clean --all && nervapack ingest .

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What Gets Updated

For each changed source file (.py, .js, .ts, etc.):

1. Old graph nodes for that file are removed (O(1) — file index lookup).
2. Old ChromaDB vectors for that file are deleted (delete_by_file).
3. The file is re-parsed by tree-sitter into new entities.
4. All new entities are batch-upserted into ChromaDB in one call.
5. New graph nodes and DEFINES edges are added.