Config Snapshots & Time-Travel Diff

Capture point-in-time snapshots of a device's full /export and diff any two — or one against the live device — to see exactly what changed, and when. Unlike a /export to a file on the router, snapshots are stored on the MCP host (~/.mikrotik-mcp/snapshots.db, Bun-native SQLite), so they survive reboots and factory resets and accumulate a configuration history you can reason over.

Independent of the dashboard — snapshots work whether or not --dashboard is set.

Tools (Config Snapshots module, System & Ops)Copy Anchor Link

Capture & diffCopy Anchor Link

capture_config_snapshot label="pre-firewall-change"
# … make changes …
diff_config_snapshots from=latest to=live

from/to each accept a snapshot id, latest (the newest stored), or live (capture the device right now). Common patterns:

• Drift check — from=latest to=live: what changed since the last snapshot?
• Compare two points in time — from=<id-a> to=<id-b>.

The diff is a unified diff with added/removed counts, rendered by the shared line-diff engine.

Why it's accurateCopy Anchor Link

• Captures use /export terse (one self-contained line per item) for clean, stable diffs.
• The volatile timestamp header RouterOS writes (# … by RouterOS …) is stripped before hashing/diffing, so two captures of an unchanged device diff to nothing — and capture_config_snapshot will tell you "no change since the last snapshot" instead of storing a duplicate (pass force=true to store anyway).

TipsCopy Anchor Link

• capture_config_snapshot can scope to one section, e.g. section="ip firewall filter".
• Sensitive values are hidden unless you pass show_sensitive=true.
• The snapshot body returned by get_config_snapshot is itself a RouterOS .rsc script suitable for review or manual re-application.