Sb

Second Brain (sb)

Persistent second brain for Claude Code, backed by the ai-mind Obsidian vault.

What it does

• Captures every conversation automatically (Stop hook → conversations/<project>/<session>.md).
• Scopes notes by project — one project per cwd. Each gets INDEX.md, kanban.md, lessons.md, plans/.
• Analyzes unprocessed conversations into lessons, takeaways, action items, and tags (via claude -p → Haiku, JSON schema).
• Tracks project tasks via Kanban markdown boards.
• Connects notes across projects (tag overlap + keyword similarity).
• Topic notes for evergreen reference (CRUD, observability, k8s, etc.).
• Auto-tags notes from rules + LLM suggestions.
• AI-first notes — lessons/topics carry a ## For future Claude preamble + ai-first: true; a non-blocking Write/Edit validator warns on notes that miss it.
• Self-maintenance — /sb:consolidate dedupes lessons, archives stale conversations, and promotes durable lessons to memory (manual, dry-run by default); /sb:health audits the vault.
• Obsidian Bases — /sb:bases generates database views (Lessons, Projects, Conversations, Tasks, Memory) in 00_Dashboard/.
• External memory bridges — promotes durable lessons into the harness file-memory (~/.claude/projects/.../memory) and logs activity to the ~/.remember rolling history; new-session INDEX surfaces both.

Subcommands

Command	Purpose
/sb:status	Project + brain dashboard
/sb:analyze [sid?]	Mine un-analyzed conversations → lessons/takeaways/actions/tags
/sb:lesson "<title>"	Capture a lesson from the current conversation
/sb:topic <slug>	Create or extend a study/topic note
/sb:tasks [--project] [--all]	List pending kanban tasks
/sb:task add "<text>" [...]	Add task to project kanban
/sb:task done <n|prefix>	Mark task done
/sb:kanban [--project] [--open]	Render/open project kanban
/sb:connect [--current]	Suggest links between notes
/sb:tag [path?]	Auto-tag notes
/sb:search <query>	Vault full-text search via Obsidian CLI; --semantic fuses precomputed-vector neighbors with lexical (RRF, key-free)
/sb:project [<slug>]	List projects / show project INDEX
/sb:backfill [--days N|--all]	Import historical conversations
/sb:consolidate [--apply]	Dedupe lessons, archive stale convos, promote durable→memory, import global lessons (dry-run unless --apply)
/sb:health [--json]	Read-only vault audit (orphans, duplicates, stale tasks, malformed frontmatter)
/sb:bases	(Re)generate Obsidian Bases views into 00_Dashboard/
/sb:ingest [--payload <f>]	Write a supplied JSON note payload into 02_Projects/<slug>/ (generic; the sutra orchestrator feeds it parsed repo artifacts)
/sb:decision "<title>" [--from-council]	Capture an ADR (Context/Decision/Consequences/Usage) into 02_Projects/<slug>/decisions + global 11_Decisions
/sb:lessons-import [--push]	Import ~/.claude/lessons into the vault; --push writes sb lessons back to the global INDEX
/sb:graph [--project <slug>]	Build a knowledge graph via graphify + mirror graphify-out/ into 09_Exports/graph
/sb:zettel "<claim>"	Atomic permanent Zettelkasten note (claim-title, related/sources) in 14_Zettelkasten
/sb:meeting "<title>" [--attendees a,b]	Meeting note; attendees auto-linked to People + interaction-logged
/sb:person <name> [--log "..."]	People/CRM note + interaction log in 12_People
/sb:habit "<name>" [--done|--list]	Habit tracker with streaks in 15_Habits
/sb:verify <slug>	Mark an AI-drafted note human-verified (clears the [!ai] callout + review queue)
/sb:challenge <slug>	Append a skeptical ## Challenge pass using your own related notes
/sb:ask-highlights "<query>"	Verbatim-only retrieval (quotes + file:line), never generated prose
/sb:dashboard	Regenerate the Life-Dashboard homepage (00_Dashboard/Home.md)
/sb:eval [--rebuild] [--sample N]	Measure retrieval quality — recall@1/3/5/10 + MRR per type over a Haiku-paraphrased held-out question set (_meta/eval-set.json)
/sb:distill "<note>"	Distill a note into atomic, source-anchored claims (each (src: Bn)); unsourced claims dropped + reported; verified:false note in 08_Insights
/sb:related "<note>" [--k N]	Semantically nearest notes via smart-connections precomputed vectors (key-free, note-to-note cosine)
/sb:init	(Re)generate _CLAUDE.md + index.md (folder map, note types, rules, command list, counts, Base links) — idempotent, sentinel-bounded
/sb:emerge [--apply] [--min N]	Cluster lessons/zettels/topics by shared tag/title-token; draft type:synthesis, verified:false pages in 08_Insights (dedup via _meta/synthesis-seen.json)
/sb:idea "<title>" [--body "a; b"]	Capture an idea into 16_Ideas (status:captured); bullets become the graduation checklist
/sb:graduate "<idea>" [--project <slug>]	Promote an idea → 02_Projects/<slug>/ + seed kanban cards from its bullets; idea status:graduated + backlink

Note: /sb:task new "<title>" [--parent <slug>] supports hierarchical sub-tasks. Haiku-drafted notes (/sb:lesson, /sb:decision, /sb:zettel --draft) are written verified: false with a visible [!ai] callout and appear in unverified.base until /sb:verify.

Note: /sb:lesson "<title>" [--memory] — --memory (or a model durable:true flag) also promotes the lesson to harness file-memory.

Note: facts that change over time (a person's role/company/relationship, a project's status) are recorded bi-temporally via lib/timeline.js — a timeline: frontmatter list of field|value|from|source entries. Values are never overwritten; the first change also seeds the prior value (source: initial) so no history is lost. currentValue/historyOf read it back.

When to invoke

• User mentions "lesson learned", "remember this", "note this decision" → /sb:lesson
• User asks "what's on my plate?", "show tasks", "todos" → /sb:tasks or /sb:status
• User wants to study a topic or build reference notes → /sb:topic
• User asks "what did we figure out about X?" → /sb:search
• After a significant decision, root-cause discovery, or pivot → /sb:lesson then /sb:connect --current
• User says "set up second brain" or "install sb" → point them at ~/Desktop/git_projects/my_work/main-project/secondbrain_obsidian_claude/README.md

Vault layout

~/Documents/vaults/ai-mind/
├── conversations/<project>/<session>.md   # auto
├── projects/<project>/{INDEX,kanban,lessons}.md + plans/
├── lessons/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>.md
├── topics/<slug>.md
├── connections/<theme>.md
├── 08_Insights/          # distillation + synthesis (verified:false until /sb:verify)
├── 16_Ideas/<slug>.md    # captured ideas (status: captured|graduated)
├── inbox/
├── templates/
├── tags.md
└── _meta/{session-map,tag-rules}.json

Configuration env vars

Var	Default	Purpose
SB_VAULT_PATH	~/Documents/vaults/ai-mind	Vault root
SB_VAULT_NAME	ai-mind	Vault name for obsidian vault=… calls
SB_ANALYZER_MODEL	claude-haiku-4-5-20251001	Model for /sb:analyze
SB_ANALYZER_MAX_TURNS	60	Truncate longer convos
SB_CAPTURE_DEBOUNCE_MS	5000	Min gap between writes
SB_CLAUDE_BIN	claude	Path to claude CLI
SB_DISABLE	unset	1 to suppress all sb hooks
SB_VALIDATE_DISABLE	unset	1 to mute the AI-first Write/Edit validator
SB_CONSOLIDATE_STALE_DAYS	90	Age after which an analyzed conversation is archive-eligible
SB_MEMORY_DIR	~/.claude/projects/<sanitized-home>/memory	Harness file-memory location
SB_MEMORY_PROMOTE	unset	0 to disable promoting durable lessons to memory
SB_REMEMBER_DIR	~/.remember	Rolling activity-history location
SB_LESSONS_DIR	~/.claude/lessons	Global (canonical) lessons store for the bridge
SB_EMBED_CMD	unset	Optional query-embedder command (query on stdin → JSON float array on stdout) for /sb:search --semantic. Unset → keyword-anchor fallback (key-free)
SB_EMBED_MODEL	TaylorAI/bge-micro-v2	Which precomputed smart-connections model's vectors to read from .smart-env/multi/*.ajson
SB_EVAL_SAMPLE	12	Notes sampled when building the /sb:eval question set

Implementation

• lib/vault.js — path/slug helpers, session-map I/O
• lib/jsonl.js — parse session JSONL → ordered turns
• lib/markdown.js — render turns; append-aware
• lib/analyzer.js — claude -p wrapper, JSON-schema extraction
• lib/tagger.js — rules + LLM tag merging
• lib/kanban.js — Obsidian Kanban markdown CRUD
• lib/connector.js — link suggestion engine
• lib/ai-first.js — ## For future Claude preamble + frontmatter + note validation
• lib/timeline.js — bi-temporal facts (timeline: history; never overwrite)
• lib/provenance.js — numbered source blocks + source-anchored claim splitting (for /sb:distill)
• lib/embeddings.js — key-free semantic layer over smart-connections precomputed vectors (cosine/nearest/anchor)
• lib/memory-bridge.js — promote/list/mirror harness file-memory facts
• lib/remember-bridge.js — append/read the ~/.remember rolling history
• lib/git.js — tiny generic git repo-root helper
• lib/lessons-bridge.js — import/list/push the global ~/.claude/lessons store
• commands/_runners/{consolidate,health,bases,init,emerge,eval}.js — self-maintenance, Bases, entry docs, synthesis, retrieval eval
• commands/_runners/{distill,related,idea,graduate}.js — provenance distillation, semantic neighbors, idea lifecycle
• commands/_runners/{ingest,decision,lessons-import,graph}.js — vault-ingest + supporting runners
• hooks/sb-capture.js — Stop/SubagentStop/PreCompact, writes conversation file (type: conversation)
• hooks/sb-plan-mirror.js — PostToolUse, mirrors plans
• hooks/sb-validate.js — PostToolUse (Write/Edit), non-blocking AI-first validator
• hooks/sb-session-start.js — scaffolds project dir; injects Memory & Remember section