Disk space and cleanup
What Vato stores on your disk outside the database, how often it is purged automatically, and how to reclaim space right now.
Beyond its database, Vato writes three kinds of files that grow with use: a browser profile per conversation, a snapshot repository per project, and the screenshots and images your agents produce. Vato purges them automatically, and you can run the same pass yourself at any time.
See what is taking space
- Open Settings, then Storage.
- The Files on disk card shows the total, then one line per category with its number of items and its size.
The card above it covers the database (conversations, messages, runtime events), which has its own cleanup.
What is purged, and when
Vato runs a pass shortly after startup and then every six hours.
| Category | Removed when |
|---|---|
| Conversation browser profiles | The conversation no longer exists, or 30 days have passed without using its browser. |
| Checkpoint repositories | Snapshots older than 14 days, keeping the 20 most recent per project. A project that no longer exists is removed entirely after 30 days. |
| Screenshots and tool images | 30 days after the file was written. |
Reclaim space now
In Settings → Storage, click Optimize storage. The same button cleans the database and runs a disk pass, then reports how much it freed.
If some items could not be removed — a file locked by another program, for example — Vato says so and retries on its next pass. You don't have to do anything.
On other computers and Vato Cloud
Every computer cleans up on its own: the pass is local, with no server involved. A desktop starts purging as soon as it runs a version that includes this cleanup.
A Vato Connect runner — another computer of yours, or a Vato Cloud machine — applies the same rules to the browser profiles it creates, 90 seconds after it starts and then every six hours. A browser that is open, or one another Connect process still holds a lease on, is never touched. Connect keeps no checkpoint repositories, so nothing else is purged there.
What you lose
The purge is deliberate about what it gives up:
- Browser profiles: the websites that profile was signed in to. The conversation's browser still works; it starts from a clean profile and you sign in again.
- Checkpoints: you can no longer revert that conversation to a message older than 14 days. The 20 most recent snapshots of each project stay available.
- Images: a conversation older than 30 days no longer shows the screenshots and generated images in its transcript. The text of the conversation is never affected.
Conversations, messages and your project files are never removed by any of this.