Maintain Skill

Periodic brain health checks and cleanup.

Contract

This skill guarantees:

• All health dimensions are checked (stale, orphan, dead links, cross-refs, backlinks, citations, filing, tags)
• Each issue found has a specific fix action
• Back-link iron law is enforced
• Citation format is validated against the standard
• Results are reported with counts per dimension

Phases

1. Run health check. Check gbrain health to get the dashboard.
2. Check each dimension:

Stale pages

Pages where compiled_truth is older than the latest timeline entry. The assessment hasn't been updated to reflect recent evidence.

• Check the health output for stale page count
• For each stale page: read the page from gbrain, review timeline, determine if compiled_truth needs rewriting

Orphan pages

Pages with zero inbound links. Nobody references them.

• Review orphans: are they genuinely isolated or just missing links?
• Add links in gbrain from related pages or flag for deletion

Dead links

Links pointing to pages that don't exist.

• Remove dead links in gbrain

Missing cross-references

Pages that mention entity names but don't have formal links.

• Read compiled_truth from gbrain, extract entity mentions, create links in gbrain

Link graph extraction

If link_count is 0 or low relative to page_count, run batch extraction:

gbrain extract links --dir ~/brain

This scans all markdown files for entity references, See Also sections, and frontmatter fields, then creates typed links in the database.

Timeline extraction

If timeline_entry_count is 0, extract structured timeline from markdown:

gbrain extract timeline --dir ~/brain

Parses

- **YYYY-MM-DD** | Source — Summary

and

### YYYY-MM-DD — Title

formats. Note: extracted entries improve structured queries (

gbrain timeline

), not vector search.

Autopilot check

Verify autopilot is running:

gbrain autopilot --status

If not running, install it:

gbrain autopilot --install --repo ~/brain

Autopilot runs sync, extract, and embed in a continuous loop with adaptive scheduling. In v0.11.1+, autopilot dispatches each cycle as a single

autopilot-cycle

Minion job and supervises the worker child — one install step gives you sync + extract + embed + backlinks + durable job processing.

Fix a half-migrated install

A v0.11.0 install where the migration skill never fired leaves Minions partially set up: schema is applied, but

~/.gbrain/preferences.json

doesn't exist, autopilot runs inline, host manifests still reference

agentTurn

. Repair:

# Check migration status
gbrain apply-migrations --list

# Apply pending migrations (idempotent; safe on healthy installs)
gbrain apply-migrations --yes

# If host-specific handlers are flagged in ~/.gbrain/migrations/pending-host-work.jsonl:
# walk them per skills/migrations/v0.11.0.md + docs/guides/plugin-handlers.md,
# ship handler registrations in the host repo, then re-run apply-migrations.

Full troubleshooting guide:

docs/guides/minions-fix.md

.

Back-link enforcement

Check that the back-linking iron law is being followed:

• For each recently updated page, check if entities mentioned in it have corresponding back-links FROM those entity pages
• A mention without a back-link is a broken brain
• Fix: add the missing back-link to the entity's Timeline or See Also section
• Format:

  - **YYYY-MM-DD** | Referenced in [page title](path) -- brief context

Filing rule violations

Check for common misfiling patterns (see

skills/_brain-filing-rules.md

):

• Content with clear primary subjects filed in

  sources/

  instead of the appropriate directory (people/, companies/, concepts/, etc.)
• Use gbrain search to find pages in

  sources/

  that reference specific people, companies, or concepts -- these may be misfiled
• Flag misfiled pages for review or re-filing

Citation audit

Spot-check pages for missing

[Source: ...]

citations:

• Read 5-10 recently updated pages
• Check that compiled truth (above the line) has inline citations
• Check that timeline entries have source attribution
• Flag pages where facts appear without provenance

Tag consistency

Inconsistent tagging (e.g., "vc" vs "venture-capital", "ai" vs "artificial-intelligence").

• Standardize to the most common variant using gbrain tag operations

Graph population (v0.10.3+)

The

links

and

timeline_entries

tables are the structured graph layer. Populate them periodically or after major imports:

• gbrain extract links --source db

  — backfill structured links by walking pages from the engine. Reads

  [Name](people/slug)

  /

  [Name](companies/slug)

  references and infers relationship types (

  attended

  ,

  works_at

  ,

  invested_in

  ,

  founded

  ,

  advises

  ,

  mentions

  ,

  source

  ). Idempotent. Use

  --source fs --dir <brain>

  if you have a markdown checkout to walk instead.

• gbrain extract timeline --source db

  — backfill structured timeline entries. Parses

  - **YYYY-MM-DD** | summary

  lines from page content. Idempotent (DB UNIQUE constraint).

• gbrain extract all --source db

  — both in one run.

• gbrain graph-query <slug> --depth 2

  — verify connectivity (use any well-known entity slug as a probe).

• gbrain stats

  — verify

  link_count > 0

  and

  timeline_entry_count > 0

  after extraction.

• gbrain health

  — review

  link_coverage

  and

  timeline_coverage

  percentages on entity pages (person/company). Below 50% means more extraction is needed.

Available link types (use with

gbrain graph-query --type

):

attended

,

works_at

,

invested_in

,

founded

,

advises

,

mentions

,

source

.

Going forward, every

gbrain put

call auto-creates and reconciles links via the auto-link post-hook (default on; disable:

gbrain config set auto_link false

). So link-extract is mostly a one-time backfill. timeline-extract should be re-run after bulk imports or content edits that add new dated entries.

Embedding freshness

Chunks without embeddings, or chunks embedded with an old model.

• For large embedding refreshes (>1000 chunks), use nohup:

  nohup gbrain embed refresh > /tmp/gbrain-embed.log 2>&1 &

• Then check progress:

  tail -1 /tmp/gbrain-embed.log

Security (RLS verification)

Run

gbrain doctor --json

and check the RLS status. All tables should show RLS enabled. If not, run

gbrain init

again.

Schema health

Check that the schema version is up to date.

gbrain doctor --json

reports the current version vs expected. If behind,

gbrain init

runs migrations automatically.

File storage health

Check the integrity of stored files and redirect pointers:

• Run

  gbrain files verify

  to check all DB records have valid data
• Run

  gbrain files status

  to see migration state (local, mirrored, redirected)
• Check for orphan

  .redirect.yaml

  pointers that reference missing storage files
• Check for large binary files (>= 100 MB) still in git that should be in cloud storage
• If storage backend is configured: verify redirect pointers resolve (download test)

Open threads

Timeline items older than 30 days with unresolved action items.

• Flag for review

Benchmark Testing

Periodically verify search quality hasn't regressed. Run a battery of test queries across difficulty tiers:

• Tier 1 (entity lookup): known names -- should always resolve
• Tier 2 (topic recall): concepts, topics -- keyword search should handle
• Tier 3 (semantic): queries with no exact keyword match -- needs embeddings
• Tier 4 (cross-domain): relational/connection queries -- only semantic handles

Compare results from

gbrain search

(keyword) vs

gbrain query

(hybrid). Quality matters more than speed (2.5s right > 200ms wrong).

When to run benchmarks:

• After major brain imports or re-imports
• After gbrain version upgrades
• After embedding regeneration
• Monthly to track quality drift

Heartbeat Integration

For production agents running on a schedule, integrate gbrain health checks into your operational heartbeat.

On every heartbeat (hourly or per-session)

Run

gbrain doctor --json

and check for degradation. Report any failing checks to the user. Key signals: connection health, schema version, RLS status, embedding staleness.

Weekly maintenance

Run

gbrain embed --stale

to refresh embeddings for pages that have changed since their last embedding. For large brains (>5000 pages), run this with nohup:

nohup gbrain embed --stale > /tmp/gbrain-embed.log 2>&1 &

Daily verification

Verify sync is running: check

gbrain stats

and confirm

last_sync

is within the last 24 hours. If sync has stopped, the brain is drifting from the repo.

Stale compiled truth detection

Flag pages where compiled truth is >30 days old but the timeline has recent entries. This means new evidence exists that hasn't been synthesized. These pages need a compiled truth rewrite (see the maintain workflow above).

Report Storage

After maintenance runs, save a report:

• Health check results (before/after scores for each dimension)
• Back-link violations found and fixed
• Filing rule violations found
• Citation gaps flagged
• Benchmark results (if run)
• Outstanding issues requiring user attention

This creates an audit trail for brain health over time.

Quality Rules

• Never delete pages without confirmation
• Log all changes via timeline entries
• Check gbrain health before and after to show improvement

Anti-Patterns

• Fixing pages without reading them first -- you must understand context before editing
• Silently skipping dimensions -- every dimension must be checked and reported, even if clean
• Deleting orphan pages without checking if they should be linked instead
• Running embedding refresh during peak usage hours
• Batch-fixing back-links without verifying the relationship is real
• Marking a dimension "clean" without actually querying it
• Rewriting compiled truth without reading the full timeline first
• Removing tags without checking if other pages use the same tag consistently

Output Format

The maintenance report follows this structure:

## Brain Health Report — YYYY-MM-DD

| Dimension           | Issues Found | Fixed | Remaining |
|----------------------|-------------|-------|-----------|
| Stale pages          | N           | N     | N         |
| Orphan pages         | N           | N     | N         |
| Dead links           | N           | N     | N         |
| Missing cross-refs   | N           | N     | N         |
| Back-link violations | N           | N     | N         |
| Citation gaps        | N           | N     | N         |
| Filing violations    | N           | N     | N         |
| Tag inconsistencies  | N           | N     | N         |
| Embedding staleness  | N           | N     | N         |
| Security (RLS)       | N           | N     | N         |
| Schema health        | N           | N     | N         |
| File storage         | N           | N     | N         |
| Open threads         | N           | N     | N         |

### Details
[Per-dimension breakdown with specific pages and actions taken]

### Benchmark Results (if run)
[Tier 1-4 query results with pass/fail]

### Outstanding Issues
[Items requiring user attention or confirmation]

Tools Used

• Check gbrain health (get_health)
• List pages in gbrain with filters (list_pages)
• Read a page from gbrain (get_page)
• Check backlinks in gbrain (get_backlinks)
• Link entities in gbrain (add_link)
• Remove links in gbrain (remove_link)
• Tag a page in gbrain (add_tag)
• Remove a tag in gbrain (remove_tag)
• View timeline in gbrain (get_timeline)