BrainPalace CLI

Command-line interface for managing AI agent memory and knowledge retrieval with the BrainPalace RAG server.

BrainPalace (formerly doc-serve) is an intelligent document indexing and semantic search system designed to give AI agents long-term memory. This CLI provides a convenient way to manage your BrainPalace server and knowledge base.

Why BrainPalace?

AI agents need persistent memory to be truly useful. BrainPalace provides the retrieval infrastructure that enables context-aware, knowledge-grounded AI interactions.

Search Capabilities

Search Type	Description	Best For
Semantic Search	Natural language queries using OpenAI embeddings	Conceptual questions, related content
Keyword Search (BM25)	Traditional keyword matching with TF-IDF ranking	Exact matches, technical terms
Hybrid Search	Combines vector + BM25 approaches	General-purpose queries
GraphRAG	Knowledge graph retrieval	Understanding relationships

Installation

Canonical path: the guided installer installs the CLI + server, configures a provider, and offers to wire your AI coding assistant(s) — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Antigravity, skill-runtime — all in one run:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bxw91/brainpalace/main/scripts/setup.sh | bash

Just this package, via pip:

pip install brainpalace-cli

Quick Start

brainpalace init          # Initialize project
brainpalace start         # Start server
brainpalace index ./docs  # Index documents
brainpalace query "search term"

Note: The legacy command doc-svr-ctl is still available but deprecated. Please use brainpalace for new installations.

Development Installation

cd brainpalace-cli
poetry install

Usage

# Check server status
brainpalace status

# Search documents
brainpalace query "how to use python"

# Index documents from a folder
brainpalace index ./docs

# Reset/clear the index
brainpalace reset --yes

Configuration

Set the server URL via environment variable:

export BRAINPALACE_URL=http://localhost:8000

Or use the --url flag:

brainpalace --url http://localhost:8000 status

Note: The legacy environment variable DOC_SERVE_URL is still supported for backwards compatibility.

Commands

Server Management

Command	Description
`init`	Initialize project for BrainPalace (creates `.claude/brainpalace/`)
`start`	Start the BrainPalace server for current project
`stop`	Stop the running server
`list`	List all running BrainPalace instances
`status`	Check server health and indexing status

Data Management

Command	Description
`query`	Search indexed documents
`index`	Start indexing documents from a folder
`reset`	Clear all indexed documents

Options

All commands support:

--url - Server URL (or BRAINPALACE_URL / DOC_SERVE_URL env var)
--json - Output as JSON for scripting

Example Workflow

# 1. Initialize a new project
cd my-project
brainpalace init

# 2. Start the server
brainpalace start

# 3. Index your documentation
brainpalace index ./docs ./src

# 4. Query your knowledge base
brainpalace query "How does authentication work?"

# 5. Stop when done
brainpalace stop

Documentation

User Guide - Getting started and usage
Developer Guide - Contributing and development
API Reference - Full API documentation

Release Information

Current Version: See pyproject.toml
Release Notes: GitHub Releases
Changelog: Latest Release

Related Packages

brainpalace-rag - The RAG server that powers BrainPalace

License

MIT

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