living-brain 0.1.1

Living Brain — agent-native CLI for a markdown-backed personal knowledge and task store.

brain — Living Second Brain (MVP)

Agent-native CLI for a markdown-backed event store. See CONTEXT.md for the product vision and principles.

This is the MVP covering the two foundational pieces: the capture path + event schema, and the timeline retrieval surface.

Install

uv sync                 # create .venv and install deps
uv pip install -e .     # install the `brain` CLI into the venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Or with pip:

python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quickstart

brain init ./my-vault               # scaffold a vault
export BRAIN_DIR=./my-vault          # point the CLI at it (or use --vault)

brain add "reviewed the hugentobler essay" --type note --tags research,agents
echo "use ULID for event ids" | brain add --type decision
brain add --file notes/meeting.md --type note

brain timeline --last 7d             # recent events
brain timeline --format md --write   # writes renders/timelines/<range>.md

CLI contract (for agents)

Every command returns a JSON envelope when an agent is detected (--agent flag, or env var: CLAUDECODE, CURSOR_TRACE_ID, COPILOT_AGENT_ENABLED, AIDER_*, OPENCODE). Humans get a clean text view; under the hood it's the same data.

Success envelope

{
  "ok": true,
  "command": "brain add",
  "result": { "...": "command-specific payload" },
  "next_actions": [
    { "command": "brain show <id>", "description": "...",
      "params": { "id": { "value": "01K..." } } }
  ],
  "metrics": { "duration_ms": 34, "cost_usd": 0.0 }
}

Error envelope

{
  "ok": false,
  "command": "brain add",
  "error": { "code": "INVALID_TYPE", "message": "...", "retryable": false },
  "fix": "plain-language suggested fix",
  "next_actions": [ ... ],
  "metrics": { "duration_ms": 3, "cost_usd": 0.0 }
}

Exit codes

• 0 — success
• 2 — validation / user error (retryable=false)
• 3 — transient / retryable error
• 4 — vault not found / not initialized
• 1 — unexpected error

Event file shape

vault/
├── events/YYYY/MM/DD/<ulid>-<slug>.md
├── renders/timelines/<range>.md
├── audit/YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl
└── .brain/
    ├── config.toml
    └── cache.sqlite          # derivative, rebuildable with `brain reindex`

An event file:

---
id: 01K...ULID
schema: 1
type: note
created_at: 2026-04-24T14:32:11Z
ingested_at: 2026-04-24T14:32:12Z
source: cli
agent: unknown
tags: [research, agents]
links: []
hash: sha256:...
---

the actual markdown body

Event types (v0)

note · task · decision · fact · link

Add via --type. Classification subagent is deferred; current MVP requires explicit type (or defaults to note).

Development

uv run pytest          # run the test suite
uv run ruff check      # lint
uv run ruff format     # format