Vault isn’t syncing

Common first step: confirm Kition wrote to disk

Kition autosaves every ~800ms by default, but the write can fail if the battery is critical, the disk is full, or another process holds the file lock.

# In your vault root, see the most recently changed files
ls -lt | head -20

# Confirm the file size > 0 and mtime is in the last minute
stat "Daily/2026-06-07.md"

# macOS: see if anything is holding the file open
lsof | grep "2026-06-07.md"

Git sync triage

Git sync is the most transparent and controllable path — git status shows everything.

• git status — check for staged / unstaged changes
• git pull --rebase — fetch remote, replay your local on top
• git log --oneline -10 — confirm the other machine’s commits actually exist
• Open conflict files in the editor, remove the <<<<<<< markers, then git add + git commit
• Settings → Sync → check the auto-push interval (default is 5 minutes)

iCloud / Dropbox triage

Both are background filesystem services — Kition writes a .md, the iCloudDrive / Dropbox daemon pushes it up. Any sync problem is reflected in the daemon’s status.

• Look at the small icon next to the filename in Finder: cloud + arrow = uploading, green check = synced, red exclamation = failed
• Click the iCloud / Dropbox tray icon and scan the "recent activity" list for errors
• Open the cloud console (iCloud.com, dropbox.com), navigate to your vault path, confirm the remote actually has it
• Conflict file naming: filename (conflict-...).md, filename (Bob’s MacBook).md — these come from the sync tool, not Kition
• Never mount two cloud clients on the same directory — they will fight and overwrite each other

Dealing with conflict files

When you see something like Note (conflict-2026-06-07-093012).md, do not just delete it — that file is another version the sync tool rescued. Correct flow:

• Open the original Note.md in Kition
• Open the conflict file in a plain text editor (or another Kition window)
• Diff section by section and merge the right content into Note.md
• Save, then delete the conflict file
• Strongly recommended: cp Note*.md /tmp/ first as a backup

Workaround

If you urgently need A’s latest content on B and normal sync is stuck: copy the entire vault directory across via rsync / scp / a USB drive, overwriting B’s old vault. Kition will rebuild the index on next launch (5-30s).

When to file a bug

• Kition saved but the sync tool never noticed (mtime did not change)
• After index rebuild, all wikilinks / backlinks vanish
• .kitable files share the same mtime on both machines but differ in row count / checksum (data fork)