Profiles and snapshots

Use profiles and snapshots to manage multiple sets of agent assets and switch between them.

What are profiles?

A profile is a named collection of assets: like browser profiles for your coding agent. For example, a “work” profile holds enterprise-focused skills and a “personal” profile holds hobby project tools.

Create profiles

From an asset list

Specify exactly which assets belong in the profile:

nd profile create work --assets skills/enterprise-auth,skills/jira-integration,agents/code-reviewer

From current deployments

Capture whatever is currently deployed:

nd profile create work --from-current

Add a description:

nd profile create work --from-current --description "Enterprise development setup"

Build profiles incrementally

Add assets to an existing profile one at a time:

nd profile add-asset work skills/new-skill
nd profile add-asset work commands/deploy-staging

List profiles

nd profile list

nd marks the active profile with *.

Deploy a profile

Deploy all assets from a profile:

nd profile deploy work

This resolves each asset reference from your registered sources and creates symlinks. nd reports missing assets as warnings. See How nd works for what happens on disk when symlinks are created.

Preview first:

nd profile deploy work --dry-run

Switch profiles

Switch from the current active profile to another:

nd profile switch personal

This shows a diff preview of what changes:

• Remove: Assets from the current profile (origin: profile:<current>)
• Deploy: Assets from the new profile
• Keep: Pinned and manually deployed assets

Before switching, nd automatically saves a snapshot (safety net). After confirming, it removes old profile assets and deploys new ones.

Delete profiles

nd profile delete work

This removes the profile definition but does not remove any currently deployed assets. Run nd profile delete with no arguments to get an interactive picker.

Pin assets

Pinned assets persist across profile switches. Use this for assets you always want available regardless of which profile is active.

# Pin an asset
nd pin skills/greeting

# Unpin (returns to "manual" origin)
nd unpin skills/greeting

When switching profiles, nd skips pinned assets entirely: nd neither removes nor redeploys them.

Snapshots

A snapshot is a point-in-time record of all current deployments. Think of it as a bookmark you can return to.

Save a snapshot

nd snapshot save before-experiment

List snapshots

nd snapshot list

The list shows both user-created and auto-created snapshots. nd tags auto-snapshots (created before destructive operations) with (auto).

Restore a snapshot

nd snapshot restore before-experiment

This removes all current deployments and redeploys the snapshot’s assets. nd saves an auto-snapshot before restoring (so you can undo the restore).

Run nd snapshot restore with no arguments to get an interactive picker.

Delete a snapshot

nd snapshot delete old-snapshot

Auto-snapshots

nd automatically saves snapshots before destructive operations like profile switching and snapshot restoring. nd retains the 5 most recent auto-snapshots and cleans up older ones.

Workflow example

Here is a complete workflow using profiles, pinning, and snapshots:

# Create two profiles
nd profile create work --assets skills/jira,skills/enterprise-auth,agents/reviewer
nd profile create personal --assets skills/blog-writer,skills/recipe-helper

# Pin assets you always want
nd pin skills/greeting
nd pin rules/no-emojis

# Deploy the work profile
nd profile deploy work

# Later, switch to personal
nd profile switch personal
# Shows diff, confirms, switches

# Try something experimental
nd snapshot save before-experiment
nd deploy skills/experimental-thing

# Didn't work out -- restore
nd snapshot restore before-experiment

# Back to work
nd profile switch work

Pinned assets (skills/greeting, rules/no-emojis) persist through every switch.