data-persistence.md

Data Persistence

$Stepper is a hashtable initialized in the calling scope on the first New-Step invocation. Any key/value you add is automatically serialized to the .stepper file after each step and restored on resume.

New-Step 'Gather Data' {
    $Stepper.Servers = Get-Content servers.txt
    $Stepper.StartTime = Get-Date
}

New-Step 'Process Data' {
    # $Stepper.Servers is available here even after a crash and resume
    foreach ($server in $Stepper.Servers) {
        Write-Host "Processing $server..."
    }
}

New-Step 'Report' {
    $elapsed = (Get-Date) - $Stepper.StartTime
    Write-Host "Finished in $($elapsed.TotalSeconds)s"
}

Stop-Stepper

System-injected keys (read-only by convention): $Stepper.StepName, $Stepper.StepNumber

$Stepper data persists until Stop-Stepper deletes the state file.

State File

Stepper stores state in <scriptname>.ps1.stepper alongside the script, using PowerShell's Export-Clixml / Import-Clixml serialization format.

Field	Description
ScriptHash	SHA256 of the script at time of save
ScriptContents	Full script text (used by More Details view)
LastCompletedStep	filepath:lineNumber identifier
LastCompletedStepName	Step name, or $null if unnamed
LastCompletedStepNumber	1-based step index
Timestamp	ISO 8601 datetime
StepperData	Serialized $Stepper hashtable
LogPath	Resolved path to the log file, or $null if logging is disabled
LoggingEnabled	$true unless the user chose [d] at the scope prompt
NoLogStepIds	Array of filepath:lineNumber identifiers for steps with -NoLog

Manual inspection:

Import-Clixml .\myscript.ps1.stepper

Manual deletion is always safe; the next run simply starts fresh.