Brains

Brains is a local-first operator control plane for coordinating AI coding agents across machines, tools, work, and human approvals.

Current maturity: Brains is an alpha release. Core local workflows are covered by blocking CI and sealed local UAT. Live deployment and external provider or bridge behavior depend on operator configuration and are not certified by repository evidence.

Brains is the canonical product and repository identity. It is distributed as brains-ai, uses the brains Python namespace, brains_ MCP prefix, ~/.brains state directory, brains-spa frontend package, and Brains browser identity.

Install

Brains requires Python 3.11 or 3.12. Install the CLI in an isolated environment:

python -m pip install --user pipx
python -m pipx ensurepath
pipx install brains-ai

Initialize Brains for the project you want it to coordinate, then start the supervised gateway, browser console, and MCP server:

cd <project>
brains-ai setup --path .
brains-ai serve-all

Open http://127.0.0.1:8787/app. The setup command prints the generated admin-key location; reveal it only when needed with brains-ai admin-key show --reveal.

To start Brains automatically at login, use brains-ai setup --path . --service. Upgrade an existing isolated installation with pipx upgrade brains-ai.

Canonical documentation

• Product brief
• Feature contract
• User outcome specification
• Personas and journeys
• Traceability
• Architecture
• Operations
• Quality gates
• Current backlog

Repository guidance

• Contributing
• Security
• Agent instructions
• Code of Conduct
• MIT License