Open source · Self-hostable · Early access

Think it.
Keep it.
Use it.

Most note apps store text. Most AI assistants forget everything when the tab closes. Brain Portal is the thing in between — a durable record of what you think, and an AI that has actually read it.

No password needed. Magic link when your spot opens.

38
Tools your AI can call
1
Input for everything
0
Passwords to remember
100%
Open source, self-hostable

One input

Type a thought. We figure out the rest.

The Brain Bar classifies everything you throw at it — notes, tasks, questions, URLs, voice memos — and routes it to the right place. One input. No menus, no decisions. Cmd+K to search anything, Cmd+Shift+C to capture instantly.

Think of it as a command line for your brain.

Ask about this

An AI that has read your notes.

Point at any note, task, capture or idea and ask. The answer streams back immediately, already holding that item, its project, your highlights on it, and the notes semantically nearest to it. The follow-up is just the next message.

Not a generic chatbot in a sidebar. It starts from your material, and one tap keeps the answer as a note or a task.

Background work

Work that happens while you don't.

Scheduled rules, skills and your own AI tools can hand work to 17 specialist roles — code, research, legal, finance, product, ops and more. It runs out of band, against your actual context.

Nothing fires behind your back: output is versioned and waits in a review queue where you approve it, send it back, or bin it. It never writes into your notes on its own.

Connections

Your notes already know each other.

Every note, capture and task is embedded into vector space. Related ideas surface next to what you are writing — no tags, no folders, no manual linking. Ask “what did I decide about pricing” and you get the note where you decided it, not every note containing the word.

Underneath, a canonical entity graph: a company mentioned thirteen different ways collapses into one node with thirteen mentions and a timeline. It reasons about the thing, not the string.

Capture

Voice, text, link. Nothing gets lost.

Speak a thought on your phone. Paste a URL at your desk. Drop in images, PDFs, or files. Everything gets transcribed, classified, auto-tagged, and connected to what's relevant — before you finish your coffee.

Editor

Write. Don't manage.

Markdown editor with centered cursor. Distraction-free. Related notes appear alongside your writing — not because you tagged them, but because they’re actually related. Wikilinks, frontmatter, and images just work.

Tasks

From thought to shipped.

Tasks are born from notes, AI-recommended from your captures, scheduled in calendar or kanban views, and delegated to agents. Recurring tasks, priorities, due dates, and project hierarchy — all linked back to the thinking that inspired them.

Highlight to instruct

Yellow means rework this.

Highlighting a passage is an instruction, not decoration. Green keeps it, yellow reworks it, blue says more, purple tightens, red cuts, orange fact-checks, pink means explain it to me.

Every model that later reads the note is handed the same meanings — so a review responds to your markup without you writing a single line of prompt.

Works with your AI

Give Claude and Cursor a memory.

A full MCP server — 38 tools, 8 resources, 4 prompts — over stdio or HTTP. Your coding agent can search what you have written, capture what you just decided, and read your dashboard before it answers anything.

Keys are per-user, scoped and rate-limited, so you decide exactly how much reach any one agent gets.

People

A Rolodex you never had to fill in.

Contacts are built out of notes you already wrote. People and companies get pulled out of your writing, resolved against each other, and given a timeline of every mention and every real touch.

Run several businesses? Keep them in separate compartments, with one contact holding different roles at each.

Everything else you'd expect.

And a lot you wouldn't.

Daily Notes
Templated journals with mood, energy, and focus tracking
Weekly Reviews
AI-generated summaries of your progress and patterns
Journal Entries
Flexible journaling across 10 categories with monthly compilations
Voice Capture
Speak a thought on your phone; it lands transcribed and classified
Ink to Text
Sketch or handwrite, and AI transcribes it — strokes stay editable
Full-Text Search
FTS5-indexed search across all notes, captures, and tasks
Semantic Search
Vector similarity finds meaning, not just keywords
Smart Tags
AI-suggested tags, applied automatically to every capture
Quick Capture
Cmd+Shift+C for fleeting thoughts, ideas, links, and quotes
Share Target
Share a link from any app on your phone straight into your brain
Project Management
Hierarchies, health scoring, collaboration, and dashboards
Task Calendar
Day, week, and month views with kanban and backlog sidebar
Task Recommendations
AI scans your notes and suggests tasks you haven’t created yet
Skills System
9 automated skills — digest, triage, insights, notifications, and more
Heartbeat Scheduler
Automated checks and actions that run while you sleep
Pick Your Models
Choose a model per job from a live catalog; retired ones self-heal
Works Offline
Service worker and local queue — edits sync when you’re back
File Attachments
Images, PDFs, docs, and audio with auto-extraction and thumbnails
Notifications
In-app and email alerts for due dates, digests, and agent outputs
Obsidian Import
One-click vault migration with folder-to-project mapping
Markdown Export
Export your vault as .md files or a ZIP archive anytime
AI Guardrails
Set your values, style, and boundaries — agents adapt to you
Collaboration
Invite editors and viewers to projects with role-based access
Wikilinks
[[Double-bracket]] cross-references with automatic backlinking
Shareable Notes
Public read-only links for any note, revocable at any time
Mobile Ready
Full PWA with 56px touch targets and full-screen command palette
Passwordless Auth
Magic links — no passwords to leak, no credentials to manage
It Tells You When It Breaks
Background failures surface in plain language, not silence

Comparison

How we stack up.

Most tools make you choose between AI power and knowledge-management depth, and nearly all of them want to keep your data. We built both, and you can run it yourself.

Feature
Brain
NotionObsidianRoamMemApple Notes
Open source (AGPL)✓—½———
Self-host on your own DB✓—✓———
MCP server for your AI tools✓½½———
Bring your own AI key✓—½———
Pick the model per job✓—½———
AI chat scoped to one item✓½½—½—
Background agents with review✓½————
Highlight-to-instruct✓—————
Semantic search (vectors)✓✓½—✓—
Entity graph under your notes✓—½½——
Built-in CRM✓½————
AI task recommendations✓—————
Handwriting / ink to text✓————✓
Voice capture✓———✓✓
Daily notes & journaling✓½✓✓——
Weekly AI reviews✓—————
Tasks, kanban & calendar✓✓½½——
Project hierarchies✓✓✓——½
Markdown editor✓½✓½✓—
Wikilinks & backlinks✓½✓✓✓—
Works offline✓½✓——✓
Export to Markdown✓½✓✓✓—
Passwordless auth✓————½
Obsidian vault import✓—✓———
✓Full support½Partial / plugin—Not available

Comparison reflects each product's default offering as of 2026. Plugins and third-party extensions can close some of these gaps.

Your knowledge
stays yours.

Privacy isn't a feature, it's who holds the keys. Here, that can be you.

Passwordless auth
Magic links. No passwords to leak, no credentials to manage.
Secure sessions
HTTP-only cookies, random tokens, hashed at rest and never logged.
Or don’t trust us at all
Run the whole thing yourself, on your database and your own AI key.
Read the code
Every line is public — including the parts we got wrong and fixed.

Open source

Don't take our
word for it.

The whole thing is AGPL-licensed and on GitHub. Read how your data is handled instead of trusting a privacy page about it. Run it on your own Turso database and your own OpenRouter key, and we never see a word of it.

Three steps.

No onboarding flows. No setup wizards.

01

Request early access

Enter your email. We’ll let you know when your spot is ready.

02

Get your invite

A magic link, no password. One click and you’re in.

03

Start thinking out loud

Write it, say it, sketch it, share it in. Everything gets indexed and starts finding its relatives.

Stop organizing.
Start thinking.

Magic link. No password. No friction.