muse archive — export a snapshot as a portable archive

muse archive packages any historical snapshot into a self-contained tar.gz or zip file. The archive contains only the tracked files — no .muse/ metadata is included. This makes it the canonical format for distributing a specific version of your work.

Usage

muse archive                                # HEAD snapshot → <sha12>.tar.gz
muse archive --ref v1.0.0                   # tag tip → <sha12>.tar.gz
muse archive --ref feat/audio               # branch tip
muse archive --ref a1b2c3d4                 # specific commit SHA prefix
muse archive --format zip --output out.zip  # zip format, custom name
muse archive --prefix myproject/            # add directory prefix inside archive

Options

Supported formats

Output

✅ Archive: release-v1.0.tar.gz  (47 file(s), 312.8 KiB)
   Commit:  a1b2c3d4ef56  feat: release v1.0

What is included

• All files tracked in the snapshot manifest at the specified ref.
• Files are stored under their original relative paths (or under --prefix/ if specified).

What is NOT included

• .muse/ metadata (commits, snapshots, object store)
• Untracked files from state/
• Reflog entries, branch refs, config

--prefix usage

The prefix flag lets you distribute archives that unpack into a named directory, matching the convention of most open-source releases:

muse archive --prefix myproject-1.0/ --output myproject-1.0.tar.gz
# Inside the archive: myproject-1.0/README.md, myproject-1.0/src/main.py, …

Agent workflows

Create a release artifact

muse tag v1.0.0 --message "Release 1.0"
muse archive --ref v1.0.0 --format zip --output release-v1.0.zip

Batch-archive all tags

for tag in $(muse tag list --names-only); do
    muse archive --ref "$tag" --output "archives/$tag.tar.gz"
done

Distribute a specific commit

# Share an exact commit without exposing history:
muse archive --ref a1b2c3d4 --prefix shared-experiment/ --output experiment.zip

Exit codes