the-brain archive

the-brain is a deprecated project archive. This documentation preserves the former 3-layer cognitive architecture and extension-first design for reference.

DEPRECATED — PROJECT ARCHIVED. the-brain is no longer maintained. Do not install or use it for new projects. Source code and documentation are preserved for reference only.

What the-brain Was

AI tools forget between sessions. the-brain was designed to remember across the tools you used. It harvested conversations, filtered noise from signal, and consolidated what mattered. No cloud. No telemetry. Just a background daemon learning your patterns.

Quick Links


Installation	Historical installation notes; no supported installer
Quickstart	Historical runtime walkthrough
⚙️ Configuration	Config file reference
🏗️ Architecture	3-layer cognitive architecture
🧩 Writing Plugins	Historical plugin extension guide
💻 CLI Reference	Complete command reference
🌐 MCP Server	Use with Claude Desktop, Cursor, Zed
📡 Remote Mode	Historical Linux server and macOS client reference

Architecture at a Glance

The former architecture fed AI tools into three plugin slots:

Any AI tool → ⚡ INSTANT slot — immediate context (default: graph-memory)
            → ⚖️ SELECTION slot — retained information (default: spm-curator)
            → 🌌 DEEP slot — long-term consolidation (default: mlx-lora + auto-wiki)

Each slot was replaceable. The daemon loaded configured extension names from config.json ("extensions": ["my-ext"]); extensions were disabled by default for security.

What the-brain Was Designed to Learn

Corrections — "No, actually use useCallback here" → remembered for later
Preferences — "I prefer arrow functions" → injected into later contexts
Patterns — Repeated choices across sessions → suggested related concepts
Identity — Stable preferences and style tracked across retrains

Documentation Sections

Section	Description
Start Here	Archived installation, quickstart, configuration
Core Concepts	Architecture, hook system, memory layers
Customization	Plugins, harvesters, training, extensions
Reference	CLI, config schema, MCP tools, env vars
Integrations	MCP server, remote mode, AI tools, team mode, menu bar
Development	Archived contribution guidance, project structure, testing

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Runtime	Bun + TypeScript
Database	bun:sqlite + Drizzle ORM
Plugins	hookable event system
Training	Apple MLX (Python sidecar)
Docs	Next.js + Fumadocs

the-brain