ARK — Intelligent, Non-Destructive Backup Vault

ARK turns an unstructured device or SSD dump into a verified, searchable vault—without modifying the source. It combines content-addressed storage, hash deduplication, metadata enrichment, safe cleanup evidence, reversible quarantine, and off-site mirroring in one local-first CLI.

Core promise: sources are read-only, copies are hash-verified, and cleanup remains explainable and reversible.

Why it exists

Conventional backup tools answer “did a copy run?” ARK answers the harder questions:

• Is this exact file safely stored?
• Which copies are duplicates or near-duplicates?
• What is genuinely safe to remove from a phone?
• Is the second backup independent and intact?
• Can the archive still be searched by date, place, type, or description?

How it works

source device (read-only)
        ↓ extract + hash + enrich
content-addressed object store ──→ human-readable organized view
        │                                  │
        ├── SQLite/FTS search              └── reversible quarantine
        └── verified independent mirror

Identical bytes share one object. The organized view uses hardlinks, so one file can appear in useful locations without consuming duplicate storage. New objects are written atomically and re-hashed before commit.

Capabilities

• Dry-run and idempotent ingestion
• BLAKE2b content identity and exact deduplication
• EXIF extraction, offline reverse geocoding, and rule-based organization
• Natural-language-style and structured search
• Perceptual duplicate and blur detection
• Evidence-backed phone cleanup reports
• Reversible quarantine with undo manifests
• Mount-aware external mirror initialization and verification
• Local phone upload receiver with an installable PWA

Quick start

cd ark
python -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e '.[dev]'

ark init
ark scan /path/to/source --dry-run
ark scan /path/to/source
ark status
ark verify

The complete command reference, security model, vault layout, organization rules, and mirror workflow live in the ARK technical guide.

Repository map

Path	Purpose
ark/	Python package, CLI, database, rules, storage, and PWA
ark/tests/	Safety, integrity, pipeline, search, mirror, and quarantine tests
ark/ark.example.toml	Example configuration
ark/README.md	Full technical documentation

Verification

cd ark
python -m pytest -q

The tests cover source immutability, dry-run behavior, path containment, hash verification, deduplication, idempotent rescans, rule sandboxing, mirror safety, and quarantine round-trips.

Contributors

Contributor	Role
Priyadeep Jaiswal	Owner; product design, architecture, implementation, and testing

Priyadeep defined the product constraints, integrated the system, validated its safety properties, and owns the resulting work.