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.
One input
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
And a lot you wouldn't.
Comparison
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 | Notion | Obsidian | Roam | Mem | Apple Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open source (AGPL) | ✓ | — | ½ | — | — | — |
| Self-host on your own DB | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — | — |
| MCP server for your AI tools | ✓ | ½ | ½ | — | — | — |
| Bring your own AI key | ✓ | — | ½ | — | — | — |
| Pick the model per job | ✓ | — | ½ | — | — | — |
| AI chat scoped to one item | ✓ | ½ | ½ | — | ½ | — |
| Background agents with review | ✓ | ½ | — | — | — | — |
| Highlight-to-instruct | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Semantic search (vectors) | ✓ | ✓ | ½ | — | ✓ | — |
| Entity graph under your notes | ✓ | — | ½ | ½ | — | — |
| Built-in CRM | ✓ | ½ | — | — | — | — |
| AI task recommendations | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Handwriting / ink to text | ✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Voice capture | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Daily notes & journaling | ✓ | ½ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Weekly AI reviews | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Tasks, kanban & calendar | ✓ | ✓ | ½ | ½ | — | — |
| Project hierarchies | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | ½ |
| Markdown editor | ✓ | ½ | ✓ | ½ | ✓ | — |
| Wikilinks & backlinks | ✓ | ½ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Works offline | ✓ | ½ | ✓ | — | — | ✓ |
| Export to Markdown | ✓ | ½ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Passwordless auth | ✓ | — | — | — | — | ½ |
| Obsidian vault import | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — | — |
Comparison reflects each product's default offering as of 2026. Plugins and third-party extensions can close some of these gaps.
Privacy isn't a feature, it's who holds the keys. Here, that can be you.
Open source
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.
No onboarding flows. No setup wizards.
Enter your email. We’ll let you know when your spot is ready.
A magic link, no password. One click and you’re in.
Write it, say it, sketch it, share it in. Everything gets indexed and starts finding its relatives.
Magic link. No password. No friction.