55ca4984b2 feat: v0.17.0 — gbrain dream + runCycle primitive (one cycle, two CLIs) (#321)
* fix(sync): honor --dry-run in full-sync path + expose embedded count

Precondition for v0.17 brain maintenance cycle (runCycle primitive).

The full-sync path (performFullSync) previously called runImport() even
when opts.dryRun was true, silently writing to the DB and advancing
sync.last_commit. `gbrain sync --dry-run` on a fresh brain (or with
--full) would mutate state without warning.

Fix:
  - performFullSync now early-returns a `dry_run` SyncResult when
    opts.dryRun is set. Walks the repo via collectMarkdownFiles +
    isSyncable to count what WOULD be imported. No writes, no git
    state advance.
  - SyncResult gains an `embedded: number` field (required). Tracks
    pages re-embedded during the sync's auto-embed step. Existing
    return sites set 0; the synced + first_sync paths set real counts
    (best-estimate until commit 2 sharpens runEmbedCore's return type).
  - first_sync path now returns real added + chunksCreated counts
    from runImport instead of hardcoded zeros.
  - printSyncResult shows embedded count in human output.

Tests (test/sync.test.ts, new `performSync dry-run never writes`
block, PGLite + temp git repo, no DATABASE_URL required):
  - first-sync --dry-run: no pages, no sync.last_commit
  - incremental --dry-run after real sync: bookmark unchanged
  - --full --dry-run: no reimport, bookmark unchanged
  - SyncResult.embedded is a number

Codex outside-voice caught this. Would have shipped silent DB writes
on dry-run for anyone using `gbrain sync --dry-run --full`.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* fix(embed): add dry-run mode + return EmbedResult with counts

Precondition for v0.17 brain maintenance cycle (runCycle primitive).

runEmbedCore previously returned Promise<void> and had no dry-run mode.
That made it impossible for runCycle to (a) report accurate embedded
counts or (b) honor --dry-run without also skipping the entire embed
phase (which would have required runCycle to know embed's internal
semantics — a layering violation).

Changes:
  - EmbedOpts gains `dryRun?: boolean`. When set, embedPage and
    embedAll enumerate stale chunks (or would-be-created chunks for
    unchunked pages, via local chunkText without engine.upsertChunks)
    but never call embedBatch and never write to the engine.
  - runEmbedCore: Promise<void> -> Promise<EmbedResult>. Result shape:
    { embedded, skipped, would_embed, total_chunks, pages_processed,
      dryRun }.
    embedded = chunks newly embedded (0 in dryRun).
    would_embed = chunks that WOULD be embedded (0 in non-dryRun).
    skipped = chunks with pre-existing embeddings.
  - runEmbed CLI wrapper honors --dry-run flag and returns the result
    through. `gbrain embed --stale --dry-run` is now a safe preview.
  - Callers ignoring the return value (sync auto-embed, autopilot
    inline fallback, jobs.ts handlers, CLI) keep compiling — the new
    return type is additive for `await` callers.

Tests (test/embed.test.ts, new `runEmbedCore --dry-run` block, uses
the existing mock.module embedBatch pattern, no API key required):
  - dry-run --all: zero embedBatch calls, zero upsertChunks calls,
    would_embed matches stale chunk total
  - dry-run --stale correctly splits stale vs already-embedded counts
  - dry-run --slugs on a single page tallies per-chunk counts
  - non-dry-run regression guard: embedded count matches across
    concurrent workers

Codex outside-voice flagged the Promise<void> return as a blocker for
accurate CycleReport.totals.pages_embedded.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* refactor(orphans): engine-injected queries, drop db.getConnection() global

Precondition for v0.17 brain maintenance cycle (runCycle primitive).

findOrphans + queryOrphanPages previously reached into the postgres-js
singleton via db.getConnection(), which (a) didn't compose with
runCycle's explicit-engine contract and (b) was wrong for PGLite test
fixtures and for any caller not using the default global connection.
Codex outside-voice flagged this as a blocker.

Changes:
  - BrainEngine interface gains findOrphanPages() — returns pages with
    no inbound links via the same NOT EXISTS anti-join. Implemented on
    both postgres-engine (sql tag) and pglite-engine (db.query).
  - findOrphans signature: findOrphans(engine, { includePseudo }).
    Engine is required. Uses engine.findOrphanPages() and
    engine.getStats().page_count instead of raw SQL + global counts.
  - queryOrphanPages signature: queryOrphanPages(engine). Delegates to
    engine.findOrphanPages().
  - src/commands/orphans.ts drops the `import * as db` — no more
    global-state coupling.
  - Callers updated: src/core/operations.ts find_orphans handler now
    passes ctx.engine through; runOrphans CLI entry uses its engine arg.
  - No signature change needed in cli.ts (it was already passing engine
    via CLI_ONLY dispatch).

Tests (test/orphans.test.ts, new `findOrphans (engine-injected)`
describe block, PGLite in-memory, no DATABASE_URL required):
  - links correctly scope orphans (alice links to bob -> bob not
    an orphan; alice is)
  - includePseudo:true surfaces _atlas-style pages
  - queryOrphanPages delegates to passed engine
  - empty brain returns {orphans: [], total_pages: 0} without crashing

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* feat(cycle): add runCycle primitive in src/core/cycle.ts

The brain maintenance cycle as a single function. Six phases in
semantically-driven order (fix files → sync → extract → embed →
report orphans). Pure composition of existing library calls — no
execSync, no subprocess anti-patterns, no regex-parsed output.

    ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │ runCycle(engine, opts) → CycleReport              │
    │   Phase 1: lint --fix         (fs writes)         │
    │   Phase 2: backlinks --fix    (fs writes)         │
    │   Phase 3: sync               (DB picks up 1+2)   │
    │   Phase 4: extract            (DB picks up links) │
    │   Phase 5: embed --stale      (DB writes)         │
    │   Phase 6: orphans            (DB read, report)   │
    └───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why the commit-4 primitive:

  - CEO + Eng + Codex reviews all converged on "extract one cycle
    function, wire both dream and autopilot through it." Two CLIs,
    one definition of what the brain does overnight.
  - Phase order was wrong in PR #309's original dream.ts (sync
    before lint+backlinks lost the "fix files, then index them"
    semantic).
  - This commit is the bisectable foundation; commit 5 (dream)
    and commit 6 (autopilot+jobs) just call into it.

Coordination — the codex-flagged blocker:

Session-scoped pg_try_advisory_lock does not survive PgBouncer
transaction pooling (the v0.15.4 fix made pooled connections the
default). Replaced with a DB lock table (gbrain_cycle_locks) that
works through every pooler:

  - Acquire: INSERT ... ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE ... WHERE ttl < NOW()
  - Refresh: UPDATE ttl_expires_at between phases via hook
  - Release: DELETE in finally{}
  - TTL: 30 min; crashed holders auto-release

PGLite / engine=null path uses a file lock at ~/.gbrain/cycle.lock
with PID liveness check. kill(pid, 0) with EPERM treated as alive
(so init/launchd-pid holders aren't mis-classified as stale).

Lock-skip: only phases that mutate state (lint, backlinks, sync,
extract, embed) trigger lock acquisition. orphans is read-only.
Single-phase --phase orphans runs never block on a held lock.

Engine-null mode preserved: filesystem phases run, DB phases skip
with {status:'skipped', reason:'no_database'}. Matches current
dream's capability that would have been lost if runCycle required
a connected engine.

Contract details:

  - CycleReport has schema_version:"1" (stable, additive) so agents
    consuming --json can rely on the shape
  - status: 'ok' | 'clean' | 'partial' | 'skipped' | 'failed'.
    'clean' = ran successfully with zero activity; agents trivially
    detect a healthy brain.
  - PhaseResult.error: { class, code, message, hint?, docs_url? }
    (Stripe-API-tier structured failure info) when status='fail'
  - yieldBetweenPhases hook: awaited between EVERY phase and before
    return, runs even after phase failure, exceptions logged but
    non-fatal. Required so the Minions autopilot-cycle handler can
    renew its job lock between phases (prevents the v0.14 stall-death
    regression codex flagged).
  - git pull explicit: opts.pull defaults to false (cron-safe).
    Autopilot daemon callers opt in if user configured it.
  - extract phase doesn't have a dry-run mode in the underlying
    library function, so runCycle honestly skips extract when
    dryRun=true (status:'skipped', reason:'no_dry_run_support').

Schema migration v16: gbrain_cycle_locks table + idx_cycle_locks_ttl.
Also appended to src/schema.sql and src/core/pglite-schema.ts for
fresh installs. schema-embedded.ts regenerated via build:schema.

Tests (test/core/cycle.test.ts, PGLite in-memory + mocked library
functions, no DATABASE_URL required):

  - dryRun × phases matrix: dryRun:true reaches lint/backlinks/sync/
    embed; extract is honestly skipped
  - Phase selection: default runs all 6 in order; --phase lint runs
    only lint; --phase orphans runs only orphans
  - Lock semantics: acquire + release on mutating phases, skip
    entirely for read-only selections
  - cycle_already_running: seeded live-holder lock → status:skipped,
    zero phase runs; TTL-expired holder → auto-claimed
  - Engine null: filesystem phases run, DB phases skip
  - File lock (engine=null) blocks when PID 1 holds lock with fresh
    mtime — exercises the PID liveness branch including EPERM
  - Status derivation: 'ok' vs 'clean' vs 'partial' vs 'skipped'
  - yieldBetweenPhases called N times, hook exceptions non-fatal

Next: commit 5 rewrites dream.ts as a thin CLI alias over runCycle,
commit 6 migrates autopilot daemon + jobs.ts handler to delegate to
runCycle too.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* feat(dream): add gbrain dream CLI as a thin alias over runCycle

`gbrain dream` is the README brand-promise command: "the agent runs
while I sleep, the dream cycle ... I wake up and the brain is smarter."
Cron-friendly, JSON-reportable, phase-selectable. Same maintenance
cycle as `gbrain autopilot`, just scheduled differently — both
converge on runCycle (added in commit 4) so there's one source of
truth for what happens overnight.

Contract:
  gbrain dream                       # full 6-phase cycle
  gbrain dream --dry-run             # preview, no writes
  gbrain dream --json                # CycleReport JSON (agent-readable)
  gbrain dream --phase <name>        # single-phase run
  gbrain dream --pull                # git pull before syncing
  gbrain dream --dir /path/to/brain  # explicit brain location

Cron: 0 2 * * * gbrain dream --json >> /var/log/gbrain-dream.log

Behavior details:
  - Brain-dir resolution: requires explicit --dir OR sync.repo_path
    in engine config. No more walk-up-cwd-for-.git footgun that
    PR #309's original dream.ts had (would lint unrelated git repos).
  - engine=null mode preserved via cli.ts's try/catch around
    connectEngine — filesystem phases (lint, backlinks) still run
    without a DB, DB phases report skipped/no_database in the output.
  - status=clean prints "Brain is healthy. N phase(s) checked in Ns."
    status=skipped prints the reason (cycle_already_running, etc.).
    Partial/failed prints the phase-by-phase detail.
  - Exit code 1 when status=failed (cron spots real problems).
    'partial' is not a failure — warnings shouldn't page you.
  - --help text cross-references `autopilot --install` for users
    who want continuous maintenance as a daemon.

CLI registration (src/cli.ts):
  - 'dream' added to CLI_ONLY
  - handleCliOnly has a pre-engine branch mirroring doctor's pattern:
    try connectEngine() → ok path; catch → runDream(null, args) so
    filesystem phases still run when DB is down
  - Help text updated with one-line dream entry and autopilot cross-ref

Tests (test/dream.test.ts, real PGLite + real library calls, no mocks
to avoid `mock.module` leakage across test files):
  - brainDir resolution: explicit --dir wins, engine config fallback,
    missing + nonexistent errors
  - phase selection: --phase lint|orphans produces single-phase report
  - phase validation: --phase garbage exits 1
  - output: --json parses as CycleReport with schema_version:"1"
  - human output mentions "Brain is healthy" on clean status
  - dry-run: cycle runs but DB stays untouched
  - exit code: clean/ok/partial do not call process.exit

Also (test/core/cycle.test.ts): refactored to use beforeAll/afterAll
with one shared PGLite engine per describe + truncateCycleLocks
between tests. Cuts test time from ~11s to ~4s; avoids the 15-migration
penalty per test that was causing parallel-suite timeout flakes.

Co-Authored-By: Wintermute <wintermute@garrytan.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* feat: v0.17.0 — autopilot + jobs delegate to runCycle (unifies the cycle)

Autopilot daemon (`--inline` path) and Minions `autopilot-cycle`
handler both now delegate to `runCycle` (introduced in commit 4).
Three callers, one cycle definition:

  1. `gbrain dream`                        — one-shot cron cycle
  2. `gbrain autopilot` daemon inline path — scheduled cycles
  3. `autopilot-cycle` Minions handler     — durable queue with retry

All three share:
  - Same 6 phases in same order (lint → backlinks → sync → extract →
    embed → orphans)
  - Same DB lock table coordination (`gbrain_cycle_locks`)
  - Same yieldBetweenPhases discipline (prevents v0.14 stall-death)
  - Same structured CycleReport output

Autopilot inline path gains lint + orphan sweep that the old path
skipped. Minions autopilot-cycle handler also gains lint + orphans.
Users who run `gbrain autopilot --install` see 6-phase reports in
`gbrain jobs get <id>` starting on next interval. No config change
required.

Changes:
  - `src/commands/autopilot.ts`: inline fallback path (~20 lines)
    replaces the ~22-line sync+extract+embed sequence with a single
    runCycle call. Uses pull:true (matches pre-v0.17 autopilot
    behavior). Uses setImmediate yield hook. Status/failure reporting
    derives from CycleReport.status. `--help` cross-references `gbrain
    dream` for one-shot use.
  - `src/commands/jobs.ts:579` (`autopilot-cycle` handler): replaces
    the 4-step try/catch sequence with a runCycle call. Returns
    `{ partial, status, report }` so `gbrain jobs get <id>` shows the
    full structured CycleReport. Preserves partial-failure semantic
    (one phase failing does NOT throw; next cycle still runs).
    yieldBetweenPhases yields the event loop between phases for the
    worker's lock-renewal timer.

Release scaffolding:
  - VERSION: 0.16.0 → 0.17.0
  - CHANGELOG.md: v0.17.0 entry in GStack voice — headline, numbers
    table, "what this means" paragraph, "To take advantage" block
    per CLAUDE.md post-ship rules. Itemized changes below the fold.
    Credit to @Wintermute for the original PR #309 thesis.
  - skills/migrations/v0.17.0.md: documents what changed for
    upgrading users. No mechanical action required — schema migration
    v16 (cycle locks table) + handler delegation both apply
    automatically. Includes opt-out paths for users who don't want
    their daemon modifying files (use `dream --phase orphans` in cron
    and skip autopilot-install, or other explicit configs).
  - CLAUDE.md: new entries for `src/core/cycle.ts` and
    `src/commands/dream.ts` with contract details.

Tests: no new test file needed for this commit — the cycle primitive
is extensively tested in test/core/cycle.test.ts (18 cases), dream
in test/dream.test.ts (11), and autopilot's delegation is mechanical
(calls runCycle with specific opts). The handler contract is covered
implicitly: if runCycle returns a CycleReport, the handler wraps it
in `{ partial, status, report }` — nothing else to assert.

Verified:
  - `bun test test/autopilot-install.test.ts test/autopilot-resolve-cli.test.ts test/core/cycle.test.ts test/dream.test.ts` → 37 pass, 0 fail

Completes the v0.17.0 feature: 6 bisectable commits on one branch
(garrytan/v0.17-dream-cycle), ready to push as one PR.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* test(e2e): add runCycle + dream E2E coverage against real Postgres

Gap from the v0.17 commit series: PR #321 shipped unit-level tests
for runCycle (test/core/cycle.test.ts) and dream (test/dream.test.ts)
but no E2E coverage that exercises the real Postgres paths. Filling
that in before merge.

  test/e2e/cycle.test.ts (6 cases):
    - schema migration v16 created gbrain_cycle_locks + index
    - dry-run full cycle: zero DB writes + lock table empty after
    - live cycle: pages + chunks materialize, sync.last_commit set
    - concurrent cycle blocked by lock → status:'skipped'
    - TTL-expired lock auto-claimed (crashed-holder recovery)
    - --phase orphans skips lock entirely (read-only optimization)

  test/e2e/dream.test.ts (3 cases):
    - dream --dry-run --json emits valid CycleReport + DB stays empty
    - dream (no --dry-run) syncs pages into real DB
    - dream --phase orphans doesn't touch the cycle-lock table

Both files mock embedBatch via mock.module so the embed phase never
calls OpenAI even when the full 6-phase cycle runs (zero API cost,
zero flakiness from network calls).

Verified locally:
  - `docker run pgvector/pgvector:pg16` on port 5434
  - `DATABASE_URL=... bun test test/e2e/cycle.test.ts test/e2e/dream.test.ts` → 9 pass, 0 fail
  - Full E2E suite (`bun run test:e2e`): 16 files, 150 tests, 0 fail
  - Container torn down after: `docker stop + rm gbrain-test-pg`

Per CLAUDE.md E2E test DB lifecycle. These tests skip gracefully when
DATABASE_URL isn't set (via hasDatabase() helper + describe.skip).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Wintermute <wintermute@garrytan.com>
2026-04-22 08:23:24 -07:00

GBrain

Your AI agent is smart but forgetful. GBrain gives it a brain.

Built by the President and CEO of Y Combinator to run his actual AI agents. The production brain powering his OpenClaw and Hermes deployments: 17,888 pages, 4,383 people, 723 companies, 21 cron jobs running autonomously, built in 12 days. The agent ingests meetings, emails, tweets, voice calls, and original ideas while you sleep. It enriches every person and company it encounters. It fixes its own citations and consolidates memory overnight. You wake up and the brain is smarter than when you went to bed.

The brain wires itself. Every page write extracts entity references and creates typed links (attended, works_at, invested_in, founded, advises) with zero LLM calls. Hybrid search. Self-wiring knowledge graph. Structured timeline. Backlink-boosted ranking. Ask "who works at Acme AI?" or "what did Bob invest in this quarter?" and get answers vector search alone can't reach. Benchmarked end-to-end: Recall@5 jumps from 83% to 95%, Precision@5 from 39% to 45%, +30 more correct answers in the agent's top-5 reads on a 240-page Opus-generated rich-prose corpus. Graph-only F1: 86.6% vs grep's 57.8% (+28.8 pts). Full report.

GBrain is those patterns, generalized. 26 skills. Install in 30 minutes. Your agent does the work. As Garry's personal agent gets smarter, so does yours.

~30 minutes to a fully working brain. Database ready in 2 seconds (PGLite, no server). You just answer questions about API keys.

LLMs: fetch llms.txt for the documentation map, or llms-full.txt for the same map with core docs inlined in one fetch. Agents: start with AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md if you're Claude Code).

Install

GBrain is designed to be installed and operated by an AI agent. If you don't have one running yet:

Paste this into your agent:

Retrieve and follow the instructions at:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/garrytan/gbrain/master/INSTALL_FOR_AGENTS.md

That's it. The agent clones the repo, installs GBrain, sets up the brain, loads 26 skills, and configures recurring jobs. You answer a few questions about API keys. ~30 minutes.

If your agent doesn't auto-read AGENTS.md, point it at that file first: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/garrytan/gbrain/master/AGENTS.md is the non-Claude agent operating protocol (install, read order, trust boundary, common tasks). For the full doc map, use llms.txt at the same URL root.

Standalone CLI (no agent)

git clone https://github.com/garrytan/gbrain.git && cd gbrain && bun install && bun link
gbrain init                     # local brain, ready in 2 seconds
gbrain import ~/notes/          # index your markdown
gbrain query "what themes show up across my notes?"

Do NOT use bun install -g github:garrytan/gbrain. Bun blocks the top-level postinstall hook on global installs, so schema migrations never run and the CLI aborts with Aborted() the first time it opens PGLite. Use git clone + bun install && bun link as shown above. See #218.

3 results (hybrid search, 0.12s):

1. concepts/do-things-that-dont-scale (score: 0.94)
   PG's argument that unscalable effort teaches you what users want.
   [Source: paulgraham.com, 2013-07-01]

2. originals/founder-mode-observation (score: 0.87)
   Deep involvement isn't micromanagement if it expands the team's thinking.

3. concepts/build-something-people-want (score: 0.81)
   The YC motto. Connected to 12 other brain pages.

MCP server (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf)

GBrain exposes 30+ MCP tools via stdio:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gbrain": { "command": "gbrain", "args": ["serve"] }
  }
}

Add to ~/.claude/server.json (Claude Code), Settings > MCP Servers (Cursor), or your client's MCP config.

Remote MCP (Claude Desktop, Cowork, Perplexity)

ngrok http 8787 --url your-brain.ngrok.app
bun run src/commands/auth.ts create "claude-desktop"
claude mcp add gbrain -t http https://your-brain.ngrok.app/mcp -H "Authorization: Bearer TOKEN"

Per-client guides: docs/mcp/. ChatGPT requires OAuth 2.1 (not yet implemented).

The 26 Skills

GBrain ships 26 skills organized by skills/RESOLVER.md. The resolver tells your agent which skill to read for any task.

Skill files are code. They're the most powerful way to get knowledge work done. A skill file is a fat markdown document that encodes an entire workflow: when to fire, what to check, how to chain with other skills, what quality bar to enforce. The agent reads the skill and executes it. Skills can also call deterministic TypeScript code bundled in GBrain (search, import, embed, sync) for the parts that shouldn't be left to LLM judgment. Thin harness, fat skills: the intelligence lives in the skills, not the runtime.

Always-on

Skill What it does
signal-detector Fires on every message. Spawns a cheap model in parallel to capture original thinking and entity mentions. The brain compounds on autopilot.
brain-ops Brain-first lookup before any external API. The read-enrich-write loop that makes every response smarter.

Content ingestion

Skill What it does
ingest Thin router. Detects input type and delegates to the right ingestion skill.
idea-ingest Links, articles, tweets become brain pages with analysis, author people pages, and cross-linking.
media-ingest Video, audio, PDF, books, screenshots, GitHub repos. Transcripts, entity extraction, backlink propagation.
meeting-ingestion Transcripts become brain pages. Every attendee gets enriched. Every company gets a timeline entry.

Brain operations

Skill What it does
enrich Tiered enrichment (Tier 1/2/3). Creates and updates person/company pages with compiled truth and timelines.
query 3-layer search with synthesis and citations. Says "the brain doesn't have info on X" instead of hallucinating.
maintain Periodic health: stale pages, orphans, dead links, citation audit, back-link enforcement, tag consistency.
citation-fixer Scans pages for missing or malformed citations. Fixes format to match the standard.
repo-architecture Where new brain files go. Decision protocol: primary subject determines directory, not format.
publish Share brain pages as password-protected HTML. Zero LLM calls.
data-research Structured data research with parameterized YAML recipes. Extract investor updates, expenses, company metrics from email.

Operational

Skill What it does
daily-task-manager Task lifecycle with priority levels (P0-P3). Stored as searchable brain pages.
daily-task-prep Morning prep: calendar lookahead with brain context per attendee, open threads, task review.
cron-scheduler Schedule staggering (5-min offsets), quiet hours (timezone-aware with wake-up override), idempotency.
reports Timestamped reports with keyword routing. "What's the latest briefing?" finds it instantly.
cross-modal-review Quality gate via second model. Refusal routing: if one model refuses, silently switch.
webhook-transforms External events (SMS, meetings, social mentions) converted into brain pages with entity extraction.
testing Validates every skill has SKILL.md with frontmatter, manifest coverage, resolver coverage.
skill-creator Create new skills following the conformance standard. MECE check against existing skills.
minion-orchestrator Long-running agent work as background jobs. Submit, fan out children with depth/cap/timeouts, collect results via child_done inbox.

Identity and setup

Skill What it does
soul-audit 6-phase interview generating SOUL.md (agent identity), USER.md (user profile), ACCESS_POLICY.md (4-tier privacy), HEARTBEAT.md (operational cadence).
setup Auto-provision PGLite or Supabase. First import. GStack detection.
migrate Universal migration from Obsidian, Notion, Logseq, markdown, CSV, JSON, Roam.
briefing Daily briefing with meeting context, active deals, and citation tracking.

Conventions

Cross-cutting rules in skills/conventions/:

  • quality.md ... citations, back-links, notability gate, source attribution
  • brain-first.md ... 5-step lookup before any external API call
  • model-routing.md ... which model for which task
  • test-before-bulk.md ... test 3-5 items before any batch operation
  • cross-modal.yaml ... review pairs and refusal routing chain

How It Works

Signal arrives (meeting, email, tweet, link)
  -> Signal detector captures ideas + entities (parallel, never blocks)
  -> Brain-ops: check the brain first (gbrain search, gbrain get)
  -> Respond with full context
  -> Write: update brain pages with new information + citations
  -> Auto-link: typed relationships extracted on every write (zero LLM calls)
  -> Sync: gbrain indexes changes for next query

Every cycle adds knowledge. The agent enriches a person page after a meeting. Next time that person comes up, the agent already has context. The difference compounds daily.

The system gets smarter on its own. Entity enrichment auto-escalates: a person mentioned once gets a stub page (Tier 3). After 3 mentions across different sources, they get web + social enrichment (Tier 2). After a meeting or 8+ mentions, full pipeline (Tier 1). The brain learns who matters without being told. Deterministic classifiers improve over time via a fail-improve loop that logs every LLM fallback and generates better regex patterns from the failures. gbrain doctor shows the trajectory: "intent classifier: 87% deterministic, up from 40% in week 1."

"Prep me for my meeting with Jordan in 30 minutes" ... pulls dossier, shared history, recent activity, open threads

"What have I said about the relationship between shame and founder performance?" ... searches YOUR thinking, not the internet

Minions: your sub-agents won't drop work anymore

A durable, Postgres-native job queue built into the brain. Every long-running agent task is now a job that survives gateway restarts, streams progress, gets paused / resumed / steered mid-flight, and shows up in gbrain jobs list. Zero infra beyond your existing brain.

The production numbers that matter

Here's my personal OpenClaw deployment: one Render container. Supabase Postgres holding a 45,000-page brain. 19 cron jobs firing on schedule. Real gateway load from real daily work. The task: pull a month of my social posts from an external API and ingest them end-to-end into the brain as a structured page.

Minions sessions_spawn
Wall time 753ms >10,000ms (gateway timeout)
Token cost $0.00 ~$0.03 per run
Success rate 100% 0% (couldn't even spawn)
Memory/job ~2 MB ~80 MB

Under that 19-cron load, sub-agent spawn couldn't clear the 10-second gateway wall. Minions landed it in under a second for zero tokens. Scaling: 19,240 posts across 36 months, single bash loop, ~15 min total, $0.00. Sub-agents: ~9 min best case, ~$1.08 in tokens, ~40% spawn failure. Lab: durability ∞ (SIGKILL mid-flight, 10/10 rescued), throughput ~10× faster, fan-out ~21× with no failure wall, memory ~400× less.

Full benchmarks: production and lab.

The routing rule

Deterministic (same input → same steps → same output) → Minions Judgment (input requires assessment or decision) → Sub-agents

Pull posts, parse JSON, write a brain page, run a sync — deterministic. $0 tokens, survives restart, millisecond runtime. Triage the inbox, assess meeting priority, decide if a cold email deserves a reply — judgment. What sub-agents are actually good at. minion_mode: pain_triggered (the default) automates the routing.

What's fixed

The six daily pains — spawn storms, agents that stop responding, forgotten dispatches, gateway crashes mid-run, runaway grandchildren, debugging soup — all belonged to the "deterministic work through a reasoning model" mistake. Minions fixes them by not making that mistake: max_children cap, timeout_ms + AbortSignal, child_done inbox, full parent_job_id/depth/transcript per job, Postgres durability with stall detection, cascade cancel via recursive CTE. Plus idempotency keys, attachment validation, removeOnComplete, and gbrain jobs smoke that proves the install in half a second.

gbrain jobs smoke                        # verify install
gbrain jobs submit sync --params '{}'    # fire a background job
gbrain jobs stats                        # health dashboard
gbrain jobs work --concurrency 4         # start a worker (Postgres only)

Read skills/minion-orchestrator/SKILL.md for parent-child DAGs, fan-in collection, steering via inbox.

Minions is not incrementally better than sub-agents for background work. It's categorically different. 753ms vs gateway timeout. $0 vs tokens. 100% vs couldn't-spawn. If your agent does deterministic work on a schedule, it runs on Minions now.

Health check and self-heal

Minions is canonical as of v0.11.1 — every gbrain upgrade runs the migration automatically (schema → smoke → prefs → host rewrites → env-aware autopilot install). If you ever want to verify manually or wire a cron into your morning briefing:

gbrain doctor                    # half-migrated state? prints loud banner + exits non-zero
gbrain skillpack-check --quiet    # exit 0/1/2 for pipeline gating
gbrain skillpack-check | jq       # full JSON: {healthy, summary, actions[], doctor, migrations}

If anything's off, actions[] tells you the exact command to run. For deeper troubleshooting: docs/guides/minions-fix.md.

Moving gateway crons to Minions (deterministic scripts, zero LLM tokens per fire): docs/guides/minions-shell-jobs.md.

Durable agents: gbrain agent (v0.15)

Your subagent runs survive crashes now. OpenClaw died mid-run? The worker re-claims on restart and replays from the last committed turn. Fan-out across 50 shards, one shard crashes — the aggregator still claims after every child reaches a terminal state and writes a mixed-outcome summary. Tool calls persist as a two-phase ledger (pendingcomplete | failed) so replay is safe by construction, not by hope.

# Submit a single-subagent run
gbrain agent run "summarize my last 10 journal pages"

# Fan out N prompts across N subagent children + 1 aggregator
gbrain agent run "analyze every page" \
  --fanout-manifest manifests/pages.json \
  --subagent-def analyzer

# Tail a running job (heartbeat per turn + full transcript on completion)
gbrain agent logs 1247 --follow --since 5m

Durability is the point: every Anthropic turn commits to subagent_messages, every tool call to subagent_tool_executions. Worker kills, OpenClaw crashes, timeouts — all resumable. Host repos (your OpenClaw, etc.) ship their own subagent definitions via GBRAIN_PLUGIN_PATH + a gbrain.plugin.json manifest: see docs/guides/plugin-authors.md. Requires ANTHROPIC_API_KEY on the worker.

Skillify: your skills tree stops being a black box

Hermes and similar agent frameworks auto-create skills as a background behavior. Fine until you don't know what the agent shipped. Checklists decay. Tests drift. Resolver entries get stale. Six months later you've got an opaque pile of "skills" that nobody has read, nobody has tested, and nobody is sure still work.

GBrain ships the same capability. Except the human stays in the loop.

  • /skillify turns raw code into a properly-skilled feature: SKILL.md + deterministic script + unit tests + integration tests + LLM evals + resolver trigger + resolver trigger eval + E2E smoke + brain filing. Ten items. Every one required.
  • gbrain check-resolvable walks the whole skills tree: reachability, MECE overlap, DRY violations, gap detection, orphaned skills. Exits non-zero if anything is off.
  • scripts/skillify-check.ts — machine-readable audit. --json for CI, --recent for last-7-days files.

You decide when and what. The tooling keeps the checklist honest.

Why this is the right answer for OpenClaw

Auto-generated skills are a liability the first time a behavior breaks. Was it the skill? The test? The resolver trigger? The eval? You don't know, because you never read it. Debugging a black box is pure guesswork.

Skillify makes the black box legible. Every skill in your tree has: a contract (SKILL.md), tests that exercise that contract, an eval that grades LLM output against a rubric, a resolver trigger the user actually types, and a test that confirms the trigger routes right. If something breaks, you know which layer to look at. If anything goes stale, check-resolvable says so.

In practice this combo produces zero orphaned skills, every feature with tests + evals + resolver triggers + evals of the triggers. Compounding quality instead of compounding entropy.

# Audit a feature's skill completeness (10-item checklist)
bun run scripts/skillify-check.ts src/commands/publish.ts

# In CI: fail the build when a new feature isn't properly skilled
bun run scripts/skillify-check.ts --json --recent

# Validate the whole skills tree before shipping
gbrain check-resolvable

Skillify is not a nice-to-have. It's the piece that makes the skills tree survive six months of compounding work. Read skills/skillify/SKILL.md for the full 10-item checklist and the anti-patterns it catches.

Getting Data In

GBrain ships integration recipes that your agent sets up for you. Each recipe tells the agent what credentials to ask for, how to validate, and what cron to register.

Recipe Requires What It Does
Public Tunnel Fixed URL for MCP + voice (ngrok Hobby $8/mo)
Credential Gateway Gmail + Calendar access
Voice-to-Brain ngrok-tunnel Phone calls to brain pages (Twilio + OpenAI Realtime)
Email-to-Brain credential-gateway Gmail to entity pages
X-to-Brain Twitter timeline + mentions + deletions
Calendar-to-Brain credential-gateway Google Calendar to searchable daily pages
Meeting Sync Circleback transcripts to brain pages with attendees

Data research recipes extract structured data from email into tracked brain pages. Built-in recipes for investor updates (MRR, ARR, runway, headcount), expense tracking, and company metrics. Create your own with gbrain research init.

Run gbrain integrations to see status.

GBrain + GStack

GStack is the engine. GBrain is the mod.

  • GStack = coding skills (ship, review, QA, investigate, office-hours, retro). 70,000+ stars, 30,000 developers per day. When your agent codes on itself, it uses GStack.
  • GBrain = everything-else skills (brain ops, signal detection, ingestion, enrichment, cron, reports, identity). When your agent remembers, thinks, and operates, it uses GBrain.
  • hosts/gbrain.ts = the bridge. Tells GStack's coding skills to check the brain before coding.

gbrain init detects if GStack is installed and reports mod status. If GStack isn't there, it tells you how to get it.

Architecture

┌──────────────────┐    ┌───────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│   Brain Repo     │    │    GBrain     │    │    AI Agent      │
│   (git)          │    │  (retrieval)  │    │  (read/write)    │
│                  │    │               │    │                  │
│  markdown files  │───>│  Postgres +   │<──>│  26 skills       │
│  = source of     │    │  pgvector     │    │  define HOW to   │
│    truth         │    │               │    │  use the brain   │
│                  │<───│  hybrid       │    │                  │
│  human can       │    │  search       │    │  RESOLVER.md     │
│  always read     │    │  (vector +    │    │  routes intent   │
│  & edit          │    │   keyword +   │    │  to skill        │
│                  │    │   RRF)        │    │                  │
└──────────────────┘    └───────────────┘    └──────────────────┘

The repo is the system of record. GBrain is the retrieval layer. The agent reads and writes through both. Human always wins... edit any markdown file and gbrain sync picks up the changes.

The Knowledge Model

Every page follows the compiled truth + timeline pattern:

---
type: concept
title: Do Things That Don't Scale
tags: [startups, growth, pg-essay]
---

Paul Graham's argument that startups should do unscalable things early on.
The key insight: the unscalable effort teaches you what users actually
want, which you can't learn any other way.

---

- 2013-07-01: Published on paulgraham.com
- 2024-11-15: Referenced in batch W25 kickoff talk

Above the ---: compiled truth. Your current best understanding. Gets rewritten when new evidence changes the picture. Below: timeline. Append-only evidence trail. Never edited, only added to.

Knowledge Graph

Pages aren't just text. Every mention of a person, company, or concept becomes a typed link in a structured graph. The brain wires itself.

Write a meeting page mentioning Alice and Acme AI
  -> Auto-link extracts entity refs from content (zero LLM calls)
  -> Infers types: meeting page + person ref => `attended`
                   "CEO of X" pattern        => `works_at`
                   "invested in"             => `invested_in`
                   "advises", "advisor"      => `advises`
                   "founded", "co-founded"   => `founded`
  -> Reconciles stale links: edits remove links no longer in content
  -> Backlinks rank well-connected entities higher in search
gbrain graph-query people/alice --type attended --depth 2
# returns who Alice met with, transitively

The graph powers questions vector search can't: "who works at Acme AI?", "what has Bob invested in?", "find the connection between Alice and Carol". Backfill an existing brain in one command:

gbrain extract links --source db        # wire up the existing 29K pages
gbrain extract timeline --source db     # extract dated events from markdown timelines

Then ask graph questions or watch the search ranking improve. Benchmarked: Recall@5 jumps from 83% to 95%, Precision@5 from 39% to 45%, +30 more correct answers in the agent's top-5 reads on a 240-page Opus-generated rich-prose corpus. Graph-only F1 hits 86.6% vs grep's 57.8% (+28.8 pts). See docs/benchmarks/2026-04-18-brainbench-v1.md.

Hybrid search: vector + keyword + RRF fusion + multi-query expansion + 4-layer dedup.

Query
  -> Intent classifier (entity? temporal? event? general?)
  -> Multi-query expansion (Claude Haiku)
  -> Vector search (HNSW cosine) + Keyword search (tsvector)
  -> RRF fusion: score = sum(1/(60 + rank))
  -> Cosine re-scoring + compiled truth boost
  -> 4-layer dedup + compiled truth guarantee
  -> Results

Keyword alone misses conceptual matches. Vector alone misses exact phrases. RRF gets both. Search quality is benchmarked and reproducible: gbrain eval --qrels queries.json measures P@k, Recall@k, MRR, and nDCG@k. A/B test config changes before deploying them.

Why it works: many strategies in concert

The brain isn't one trick. Every retrieval question goes through ~20 deterministic techniques layered together. No single one is magic; the win comes from stacking them so each layer covers what the others miss.

Question
  │
  ├─ INGESTION (every put_page)
  │    ├─ Recursive markdown chunking (or semantic / LLM-guided)
  │    ├─ Embedding cache invalidation on edit
  │    └─ Idempotent imports (content-hash dedup)
  │
  ├─ GRAPH EXTRACTION (auto-link post-hook, zero LLM)
  │    ├─ Entity-ref regex (markdown links + bare slugs)
  │    ├─ Code-fence stripping (no false-positive slugs in code blocks)
  │    ├─ Typed inference cascade (FOUNDED → INVESTED → ADVISES → WORKS_AT)
  │    ├─ Page-role priors (partner-bio language → invested_in)
  │    ├─ Within-page dedup (same target collapses to one link)
  │    ├─ Stale-link reconciliation (edits remove dropped refs)
  │    └─ Multi-type link constraint (same person can works_at AND advises)
  │
  ├─ SEARCH PIPELINE (every query)
  │    ├─ Intent classifier (entity / temporal / event / general — auto-routes)
  │    ├─ Multi-query expansion (Haiku rephrases the question 3 ways)
  │    ├─ Vector search (HNSW cosine over OpenAI embeddings)
  │    ├─ Keyword search (Postgres tsvector + websearch_to_tsquery)
  │    ├─ Reciprocal Rank Fusion (score = sum 1/(60+rank) across both)
  │    ├─ Cosine re-scoring (re-rank chunks against actual query embedding)
  │    ├─ Compiled-truth boost (assessments outrank timeline noise)
  │    ├─ Backlink boost (well-connected entities rank higher)
  │    └─ Source-aware dedup (one CT chunk per page guaranteed)
  │
  ├─ GRAPH TRAVERSAL (relational queries)
  │    ├─ Recursive CTE with cycle prevention (visited-array check)
  │    ├─ Type-filtered edges (--type works_at, attended, etc.)
  │    ├─ Direction control (in / out / both)
  │    └─ Depth-capped (≤10 for remote MCP; DoS prevention)
  │
  └─ AGENT WORKFLOW (graph-confident hybrid)
       ├─ Graph-query first (high-precision typed answers)
       ├─ Grep fallback when graph returns nothing
       └─ Graph hits ranked first in top-K (better P@K and R@K)

End-to-end on the BrainBench v1 corpus (240 rich-prose pages, before/after PR #188):

Metric BEFORE PR #188 AFTER PR #188 Δ
Precision@5 39.2% 44.7% +5.4 pts
Recall@5 83.1% 94.6% +11.5 pts
Correct in top-5 217 247 +30
Graph-only F1 (ablation) 57.8% (grep) 86.6% +28.8 pts

Plus 5 orthogonal capability checks (identity resolution, temporal queries, performance at 10K-page scale, robustness to malformed input, MCP operation contract). All pass. Full report.

The point: each technique handles a class of inputs the others miss. Vector search misses exact slug refs; keyword catches them. Keyword misses conceptual matches; vector catches them. RRF picks the best of both. Compiled-truth boost keeps assessments above timeline noise. Auto-link extraction wires the graph that lets backlink boost rank well-connected entities higher. Graph traversal answers questions search alone can't reach. The agent picks graph-first for precision and falls back to keyword for recall. All deterministic, all in concert, all measured.

Voice

Call a phone number. Your AI answers. It knows who's calling, pulls their full context from the brain, and responds like someone who actually knows your world. When the call ends, a brain page appears with the transcript, entity detection, and cross-references.

Voice client connected

See it in action

The voice recipe ships with GBrain: Voice-to-Brain. WebRTC works in a browser tab with zero setup. A real phone number is optional.

Engine Architecture

CLI / MCP Server
     (thin wrappers, identical operations)
              |
      BrainEngine interface (pluggable)
              |
     +--------+--------+
     |                  |
PGLiteEngine       PostgresEngine
  (default)          (Supabase)
     |                  |
~/.gbrain/           Supabase Pro ($25/mo)
brain.pglite         Postgres + pgvector
embedded PG 17.5

     gbrain migrate --to supabase|pglite
         (bidirectional migration)

PGLite: embedded Postgres, no server, zero config. When your brain outgrows local (1000+ files, multi-device), gbrain migrate --to supabase moves everything.

File Storage

Brain repos accumulate binaries. GBrain has a three-stage migration:

gbrain files mirror <dir>       # copy to cloud, local untouched
gbrain files redirect <dir>     # replace local with .redirect pointers
gbrain files clean <dir>        # remove pointers, cloud only
gbrain files restore <dir>      # download everything back (undo)

Storage backends: S3-compatible (AWS, R2, MinIO), Supabase Storage, or local.

Commands

SETUP
  gbrain init [--supabase|--url]        Create brain (PGLite default)
  gbrain migrate --to supabase|pglite   Bidirectional engine migration
  gbrain upgrade                        Self-update with feature discovery

PAGES
  gbrain get <slug>                     Read a page (fuzzy slug matching)
  gbrain put <slug> [< file.md]         Write/update (auto-versions)
  gbrain delete <slug>                  Delete a page
  gbrain list [--type T] [--tag T]      List with filters

SEARCH
  gbrain search <query>                 Keyword search (tsvector)
  gbrain query <question>              Hybrid search (vector + keyword + RRF)

IMPORT
  gbrain import <dir> [--no-embed]      Import markdown (idempotent)
  gbrain sync [--repo <path>]           Git-to-brain incremental sync
  gbrain export [--dir ./out/]          Export to markdown

FILES
  gbrain files list|upload|sync|verify  File storage operations

EMBEDDINGS
  gbrain embed [<slug>|--all|--stale]   Generate/refresh embeddings

LINKS + GRAPH
  gbrain link|unlink|backlinks          Cross-reference management
  gbrain extract links|timeline|all     Batch backfill from existing pages
                                        (--source db|fs, --type, --since, --dry-run)
  gbrain graph-query <slug>             Typed traversal (--type T --depth N
                                        --direction in|out|both)

JOBS (Minions)
  gbrain jobs submit <name> [--params JSON] [--follow]  Submit a background job
  gbrain jobs list [--status S] [--queue Q]             List jobs with filters
  gbrain jobs get|cancel|retry|delete <id>              Manage job lifecycle
  gbrain jobs prune [--older-than 30d]                  Clean completed/dead jobs
  gbrain jobs stats                                     Job health dashboard
  gbrain jobs smoke                                     One-command health check
  gbrain jobs work [--queue Q] [--concurrency N]        Start worker daemon

ADMIN
  gbrain doctor [--json] [--fast]       Health checks (resolver, skills, DB, embeddings)
  gbrain doctor --fix [--dry-run]       Auto-fix DRY violations (delegate inlined rules to conventions)
  gbrain stats                          Brain statistics
  gbrain serve                          MCP server (stdio)
  gbrain integrations                   Integration recipe dashboard
  gbrain check-backlinks check|fix      Back-link enforcement
  gbrain lint [--fix]                   LLM artifact detection
  gbrain repair-jsonb [--dry-run]       Repair v0.12.0 double-encoded JSONB (Postgres)
  gbrain orphans [--json] [--count]     Find pages with zero inbound wikilinks
  gbrain transcribe <audio>             Transcribe audio (Groq Whisper)
  gbrain research init <name>           Scaffold a data-research recipe
  gbrain research list                  Show available recipes

Run gbrain --help for the full reference.

Origin Story

I was setting up my OpenClaw agent and started a markdown brain repo. One page per person, one page per company, compiled truth on top, timeline on the bottom. Within a week: 10,000+ files, 3,000+ people, 13 years of calendar data, 280+ meeting transcripts, 300+ captured ideas.

The agent runs while I sleep. The dream cycle scans every conversation, enriches missing entities, fixes broken citations, consolidates memory. I wake up and the brain is smarter than when I went to sleep.

The skills in this repo are those patterns, generalized. What took 11 days to build by hand ships as a mod you install in 30 minutes.

Docs

For agents:

For humans:

Reference:

Benchmarks:

  • BrainBench v1 (PR #188) ... single comprehensive before/after report on a 240-page Opus-generated corpus. 7 categories: relational queries, identity resolution, temporal queries, performance, robustness, MCP contract.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Run bun test for unit tests. E2E tests: spin up Postgres with pgvector, run bun run test:e2e, tear down.

PRs welcome for: new enrichment APIs, performance optimizations, additional engine backends, new skills following the conformance standard in skills/skill-creator/SKILL.md.

License

MIT

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