Claude Brain Toolkit

A personal knowledge hub powered by Claude Code skills. Capture who you are, catalog your projects, extract what works, and build a brain that grows with you.

What This Is

Claude Brain is an Obsidian-compatible vault paired with 6 Claude Code slash commands. Together, they give Claude persistent knowledge about you — your projects, your working style, your effective prompts, and your creative history. Instead of starting every conversation from scratch, Claude can reference your brain and pick up where you left off.

The toolkit is grounded in the AI Fluency Framework — a set of four competencies (Delegation, Description, Discernment, Diligence) for working effectively, efficiently, ethically, and safely with AI.

New: Claude Desktop Skill + Onboarding Kit

Don't use the terminal? No problem. The Brain Assistant is a Claude Desktop skill that gives you brain powers without the CLI:

1. Download desktop-skill/ from this repo
2. Zip the contents and add to a Claude Desktop project
3. The skill detects whether you have a vault and walks you through setup

Setting up a team member? The onboarding-kit/ has everything needed to go from zero to a fully configured Claude Code environment — automated setup script, global skills, commands, and a step-by-step guide.

See Desktop Skill and Onboarding Kit below.

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Quick Start

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/bizzar0helldemon/claude-brain-toolkit.git

2. Install global skills

Two skills (/brain-capture and /daily-note) need to work from any project, not just the brain vault. Copy them to your global skills directory:

cp -r claude-brain-toolkit/global-skills/* ~/.claude/skills/

3. Set your brain path

Replace {{SET_YOUR_BRAIN_PATH}} with your actual brain path in two files:

• ~/.claude/skills/brain-capture/SKILL.md
• ~/.claude/skills/daily-note/SKILL.md

For example, if you cloned to ~/claude-brain-toolkit, replace all instances of {{SET_YOUR_BRAIN_PATH}} with ~/claude-brain-toolkit.

4. Start building your brain

cd claude-brain-toolkit
claude

Then run:

/brain-intake

Claude will start a guided interview to learn about you. Your first session might cover your career, your creative work, or what you're currently building.

Skills Reference

Command	What It Does
/brain-intake [topic]	Guided interview to capture personal knowledge — career, creative work, values, communication preferences
/brain-scan [path]	Scan a project directory and catalog it into the brain with a structured summary
/brain-discover [path]	Scan a drive or directory for creative content not yet captured in the brain
/brain-update [name]	Update an existing project entry after doing more work on it
/brain-capture [hint]	Extract effective prompts and interaction patterns from the current conversation
/daily-note [content]	Log a journal entry to today's daily note

Usage Examples

/brain-intake career          # Interview about your professional history
/brain-intake creative        # Interview about your creative work and influences
/brain-scan ~/Projects/my-app # Catalog a project into the brain
/brain-discover ~/Documents   # Find creative content not yet in the brain
/brain-update my-app          # Update a project entry after new work
/brain-capture                # Extract patterns from the current conversation
/brain-capture that debug approach  # Focus on a specific technique
/daily-note Fixed the auth bug     # Quick journal entry

Vault Structure

claude-brain-toolkit/
├── .claude/skills/        # Project-scoped skills (work when brain is open)
├── global-skills/         # Copy these to ~/.claude/skills/ during setup
├── frameworks/            # AI Fluency Framework + governance policy template
├── prompts/               # Prompt & pattern library (organized by domain)
├── projects/              # Project summaries cataloged by /brain-scan
├── creative/              # Creative works, writing, art, music concepts
├── intake/                # Interview sessions from /brain-intake
├── portfolio/             # Tech skills, services, project portfolio
├── daily_notes/           # Journal entries from /daily-note
├── people/                # Notes about collaborators and contacts
├── archive/               # Raw CLAUDE.md backups from scanned projects
├── IDENTITY.md            # Your personal profile (built via /brain-intake)
├── CLAUDE.md              # Hub document + configuration
├── brain-scan-templates.md # Canonical templates for all document types
├── desktop-skill/         # Brain Assistant skill for Claude Desktop
└── onboarding-kit/        # Full setup package for new users

What Goes Where

Directory	Populated By	Contains
projects/	/brain-scan	Structured summaries of your dev/creative projects
creative/	/brain-intake, /brain-discover	Creative works, writing, art concepts
intake/	/brain-intake	Session transcripts and discovery logs
prompts/	/brain-capture	Effective prompt templates organized by domain
daily_notes/	/daily-note	Journal entries, session summaries, insights
portfolio/	/brain-scan, manual	Career materials — skills, services, project portfolio
people/	/brain-intake, manual	Notes about collaborators and contacts
frameworks/	Manual	Reference frameworks and governance docs

Obsidian Integration

This vault is designed to work with Obsidian but doesn't require it. If you use Obsidian:

• Open the claude-brain-toolkit directory as an Obsidian vault
• Wiki links ([[Project Name]]) will resolve between documents
• Frontmatter tags are searchable via Obsidian's tag panel
• Dataview queries can filter by type, status, tags, etc.

Linking Conventions

• People: [[First Last]] or [[Nickname]]
• Projects: [[Project Name]] matching the frontmatter title:
• Groups: [[Group Name]]
• Tags: kebab-case in frontmatter arrays (e.g., tags: [project, web-dev])
• File names: kebab-case (e.g., my-project-name.md)

Customization

Adding Your Own Domains

The prompt library ships with domains like coding/, writing/, music/, etc. Add your own:

1. Create a new subdirectory under prompts/ (e.g., prompts/data-science/)
2. The /brain-capture skill will detect it automatically

Adding Templates

All document templates live in brain-scan-templates.md. To add a new type:

1. Add a template section to brain-scan-templates.md
2. Define the frontmatter fields and section structure
3. Reference it in the relevant skill's instructions

Customizing Intake Topics

The /brain-intake skill has default topic areas (life story, career, creative work, etc.). To add your own:

1. Edit .claude/skills/brain-intake/SKILL.md
2. Add your topic to the list in the "Topic Areas" section
3. Add routing rules in the "Integrate Into Brain" section

The AI Fluency Framework

This toolkit is built on the Framework for AI Fluency by Dakan & Feller — four competencies for effective AI interaction:

Competency	What It Means
Delegation	Deciding what work belongs to you, to AI, or to both
Description	Communicating effectively — prompts, constraints, role definition
Discernment	Critically evaluating AI output — never accepting at face value
Diligence	Taking full responsibility for AI-assisted work

See frameworks/ai-fluency-framework.md for the full reference, and frameworks/ai-governance-policy.md for a template to define your own AI governance standards.

Desktop Skill

The Brain Assistant (desktop-skill/) is a Claude Desktop skill that makes the brain vault accessible without the CLI. It includes:

• SKILL.md — Conversation flow, intent detection, bootstrap/onboarding, CLI nudges
• BRAIN_REFERENCE.md — Vault structure, file formats, frontmatter specs, CLI command mapping

What It Does

Mode	Trigger	Behavior
Bootstrap	No vault attached	Asks "comfortable with a terminal?" → CLI setup path or Desktop-first scaffold
Explore	Questions about your vault	Searches project knowledge and answers
Draft	"Log this", "write a case study"	Generates vault-formatted content as downloadable artifacts
Think	"Help me brainstorm", "prep me for"	Uses brain context for strategic conversation
Educate	"What's GSD?", "set up CLI"	Introduces CLI commands gradually

Setup

1. Download the desktop-skill/ directory
2. Zip SKILL.md and BRAIN_REFERENCE.md together
3. In Claude Desktop, create a project and add the zip as a skill (or add both files as project knowledge)
4. Add your vault's CLAUDE.md to the same project for full brain access

The skill gradually introduces CLI equivalents — after using Desktop for a while, the terminal commands will feel familiar.

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Onboarding Kit

The onboarding-kit/ directory contains everything needed to set up a new user with the full Claude Code + Brain environment.

What's Included

File	Purpose
setup.sh	Automated setup script — installs GSD, superpowers, skills, clones vault
SETUP_INSTRUCTIONS.md	Master guide — feed to Claude Desktop and it walks the user through everything
skills/	5 global CLI skills ready to copy to ~/.claude/skills/
commands/brain/scan.md	The /brain:scan command for full filesystem scanning
CLAUDE_DESKTOP_SETUP.md	How to connect Desktop and CLI to the same vault
CLAUDE_CODE_SETUP_GUIDE_REFERENCE.md	Full technical reference for the environment

Two Setup Paths

Automated (for terminal users):

cd onboarding-kit
bash setup.sh

Guided (via Claude Desktop):

1. Add SETUP_INSTRUCTIONS.md to a Claude Desktop project
2. Tell Claude "set me up"
3. Follow the step-by-step walkthrough

Both paths end at the same place: a fully configured Claude Code CLI with a personal brain vault.

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Optional: Obsidian CLI

For power users, obsidian-cli provides command-line access to your vault. It's not required — all skills work without it.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

AI Fluency Framework content adapted from Dakan & Feller (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). See frameworks/ai-fluency-framework.md for full attribution.