Brain Operations — The Ambient Context Layer

The brain is not an archive. It is a live context membrane that every interaction flows through in both directions.

Convention: See

skills/conventions/brain-first.md

for the 5-step lookup protocol. Convention: See

skills/conventions/quality.md

for citation and back-link rules.

Contract

This skill guarantees:

• Brain is checked BEFORE any external API call (brain-first lookup)
• Every inbound signal triggers the READ → ENRICH → WRITE loop
• Every outbound response checks brain for relevant context
• Source attribution on every fact written (inline

  [Source: ...]

  citations)
• User's direct statements are highest-authority data
• Back-links maintained on every brain write (Iron Law)

Iron Law: Back-Linking (MANDATORY)

Every mention of a person or company with a brain page MUST create a back-link FROM that entity's page TO the page mentioning them. An unlinked mention is a broken brain. See

skills/conventions/quality.md

for format.

Phases

Phase 1: Brain-First Lookup (MANDATORY)

Before using ANY external API to research a person, company, or topic:

1. gbrain search "name"

   — keyword search for existing pages

2. gbrain query "natural question about name"

   — hybrid search for context

3. gbrain get <slug>

   — if you know the slug, read the full page
4. Check backlinks: who references this entity?
5. Check timeline: recent events involving this entity

The brain almost always has something. External APIs fill gaps, not start from scratch.

Phase 2: On Every Inbound Signal (READ → ENRICH → WRITE)

Every message, meeting, email, or conversation that references a person or company:

1. Detect entities — people, companies, deals mentioned
2. Load brain pages — read existing pages for context before responding
3. Identify new information — what does this signal tell us that the page doesn't know?
4. Write it back — update the brain page with new info + timeline entry + source citation
5. Create if missing — if notable and no page exists, create via enrich skill

User's direct statements are the highest-value data source. Write them to brain pages immediately with attribution

[Source: User, YYYY-MM-DD]

.

Phase 2.5: Structured Graph Updates (automatic)

Every

put_page

call automatically extracts entity references and writes them to the graph (

links

table) with inferred relationship types. Stale links (refs no longer in the page text) are removed in the same call. This is "auto-link" reconciliation.

• No manual

  add_link

  calls needed for ordinary page writes.
• Inferred link types:

  attended

  (meeting -> person),

  works_at

  ,

  invested_in

  ,

  founded

  ,

  advises

  ,

  source

  (frontmatter),

  mentions

  (default).
• The

  put_page

  MCP response includes

  auto_links: { created, removed, errors }

  so the agent can verify outcomes.
• To disable:

  gbrain config set auto_link false

  . Default is on.
• Timeline entries with specific dates still need explicit

  gbrain timeline-add

  (or batch via

  gbrain extract timeline --source db

  ).

Phase 3: On Every Outbound Response (READ → PULL → RESPOND)

Before answering any question about a person, company, or topic:

1. Check the brain — read relevant pages
2. Pull context — use compiled truth + recent timeline
3. Respond with context — the brain makes every answer better

Don't answer from general knowledge when a brain page exists.

Phase 4: Ambient Enrichment

This is not a special mode. This is the default. Everything the user says is an ingest event.

• Person mentioned → check brain, create/enrich if needed (spawn background)
• Company mentioned → same
• Link shared → ingest it (delegate to idea-ingest)
• Data shared → delegate to appropriate skill

Rules:

• Never interrupt the conversation to do enrichment
• Spawn sub-agents for anything that would slow down the response
• Never announce "I'm enriching the brain" — just do it silently

Output Format

No separate output. Brain-ops is an always-on behavior layer, not a report generator. The output is updated brain pages and enriched responses.

Anti-Patterns

• Answering questions about people/companies without checking the brain first
• Using external APIs before checking the brain
• Writing facts without inline

  [Source: ...]

  citations
• Blocking the response to do enrichment
• Overwriting user's direct statements with lower-authority sources
• Creating brain pages for non-notable entities

Tools Used

• search

  — keyword search

• query

  — hybrid vector+keyword search

• get_page

  — read a brain page

• put_page

  — create/update brain pages

• add_link

  — cross-reference entities

• add_timeline_entry

  — record events

• get_backlinks

  — check who references an entity

• sync_brain

  — sync changes to the index