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GBrain Installation Guide for AI Agents

Read this entire file, then follow the steps. Ask the user for API keys when needed. Target: ~30 minutes to a fully working brain.

Step 0: If you are not Claude Code

Read AGENTS.md at the repo root first. It's the non-Claude-agent operating protocol (install, read order, trust boundary, common tasks). Claude Code reads CLAUDE.md automatically and can skip ahead.

If you fetched this file by URL without cloning yet, the companion files live at:

  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/garrytan/gbrain/master/AGENTS.md — start here
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/garrytan/gbrain/master/llms.txt — full doc map
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/garrytan/gbrain/master/llms-full.txt — same map, inlined

Step 1: Install GBrain

git clone https://github.com/garrytan/gbrain.git ~/gbrain && cd ~/gbrain
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash
export PATH="$HOME/.bun/bin:$PATH"
bun install && bun link

Verify: gbrain --version should print a version number. If gbrain is not found, restart the shell or add the PATH export to the shell profile.

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() when it opens PGLite. Use the git clone + bun link path above. Tracking issue: #218.

Step 2: API Keys

Ask the user for these:

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...          # required for vector search
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...   # optional, improves search quality
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://... # optional, for Anthropic-compatible proxy/router

Save to shell profile or .env. Without OpenAI, keyword search still works. Without Anthropic, search works but skips query expansion.

If you use an Anthropic-compatible router (for example 9router), keep OpenAI as-is for embeddings and set only Anthropic variables for query expansion, for example:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your-router-key
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:20128/v1

Step 3: Create the Brain

gbrain init                           # PGLite, no server needed
gbrain doctor --json                  # verify all checks pass

The user's markdown files (notes, docs, brain repo) are SEPARATE from this tool repo. Ask the user where their files are, or create a new brain repo:

mkdir -p ~/brain && cd ~/brain && git init

Read ~/gbrain/docs/GBRAIN_RECOMMENDED_SCHEMA.md and set up the MECE directory structure (people/, companies/, concepts/, etc.) inside the user's brain repo, NOT inside ~/gbrain.

Step 4: Import and Index

gbrain import ~/brain/ --no-embed     # import markdown files
gbrain embed --stale                  # generate vector embeddings
gbrain query "key themes across these documents?"

Step 4.5: Wire the Knowledge Graph

If the user already had a brain repo (Step 3 imported existing markdown), backfill the typed-link graph and structured timeline. This populates the links and timeline_entries tables that future writes will maintain automatically.

gbrain extract links --source db --dry-run | head -20    # preview
gbrain extract links --source db                         # commit
gbrain extract timeline --source db                      # dated events
gbrain stats                                             # verify links > 0

For brand-new empty brains, skip this step — auto-link populates the graph as the agent writes pages going forward. There is nothing to backfill yet.

After this step:

  • gbrain graph-query <slug> --depth 2 works (relationship traversal)
  • Search ranks well-connected entities higher (backlink boost)
  • Every future put_page auto-creates typed links and reconciles stale ones

If a user has a very large brain (>10K pages), extract --source db is idempotent and supports --since YYYY-MM-DD for incremental runs.

Step 5: Load Skills

Read ~/gbrain/skills/RESOLVER.md. This is the skill dispatcher. It tells you which skill to read for any task. Save this to your memory permanently.

The three most important skills to adopt immediately:

  1. Signal detector (skills/signal-detector/SKILL.md) — fire this on EVERY inbound message. It captures ideas and entities in parallel. The brain compounds.

  2. Brain-ops (skills/brain-ops/SKILL.md) — brain-first lookup on every response. Check the brain before any external API call.

  3. Conventions (skills/conventions/quality.md) — citation format, back-linking iron law, source attribution. These are non-negotiable quality rules.

Step 6: Identity (optional)

Run the soul-audit skill to customize the agent's identity:

Read skills/soul-audit/SKILL.md and follow it.

This generates SOUL.md (agent identity), USER.md (user profile), ACCESS_POLICY.md (who sees what), and HEARTBEAT.md (operational cadence) from the user's answers.

If skipped, minimal defaults are installed automatically.

Step 7: Recurring Jobs

Set up using your platform's scheduler (OpenClaw cron, Railway cron, crontab):

  • Live sync (every 15 min): gbrain sync --repo ~/brain && gbrain embed --stale
  • Auto-update (daily): gbrain check-update --json (tell user, never auto-install)
  • Dream cycle (nightly): read docs/guides/cron-schedule.md for the full protocol. Entity sweep, citation fixes, memory consolidation. This is what makes the brain compound. Do not skip it.
  • Weekly: gbrain doctor --json && gbrain embed --stale

Step 8: Integrations

Run gbrain integrations list. Each recipe in ~/gbrain/recipes/ is a self-contained installer. It tells you what credentials to ask for, how to validate, and what cron to register. Ask the user which integrations they want (email, calendar, voice, Twitter).

Verify: gbrain integrations doctor (after at least one is configured)

Step 9: Verify

Read docs/GBRAIN_VERIFY.md and run all 7 verification checks. Check #4 (live sync actually works) is the most important.

Upgrade

cd ~/gbrain && git pull origin master && bun install
gbrain init                           # apply schema migrations (idempotent)
gbrain post-upgrade                   # show migration notes for the version range

Then read ~/gbrain/skills/migrations/v<NEW_VERSION>.md (and any intermediate versions you skipped) and run any backfill or verification steps it lists. Skipping this is how features ship in the binary but stay dormant in the user's brain.

For v0.12.0+ specifically: if your brain was created before v0.12.0, run gbrain extract links --source db && gbrain extract timeline --source db to backfill the new graph layer (see Step 4.5 above).

For v0.12.2+ specifically: if your brain is Postgres- or Supabase-backed and predates v0.12.2, the v0_12_2 migration runs gbrain repair-jsonb automatically during gbrain post-upgrade to fix the double-encoded JSONB columns. PGLite brains no-op. If wiki-style imports were truncated by the old splitBody bug, run gbrain sync --full after upgrading to rebuild compiled_truth from source markdown.