AI Brain Starter

Turn any folder of notes into an AI-powered second brain in one conversation.

One command to install. One command to start. Claude does the rest.

What This Does

You type /setup-brain in Claude Code. Claude interviews you about your life, work, and goals — then builds a complete Obsidian knowledge vault around your answers:

Memory file (CLAUDE.md) — Claude reads this automatically every session. No more re-explaining yourself.
Folder structure — organized by how you think, not how software thinks
Contact cards (CRM) — every person in your life becomes queryable
Context layer — priorities, open loops, last session, decision log
Templates — for journals, meetings, and contacts
Daily journal — Claude interviews you, saves the entry, tracks patterns over time
Accountability rules — Claude pushes back on bad ideas, checks your ego, calls you out when you're avoiding something
Power tools — Graphify (knowledge graphs), Humanizer (de-AI your writing), Claude-Mem (session memory), NotebookLM (query your Google notebooks)

The whole setup takes about 2 hours with the conversation. The basics take 30 minutes.

Install

What you need before starting

A Mac, Windows, or Linux computer. That's it. The bootstrap installs everything else for you — Obsidian, Claude Code, Python, Node.js, all the tools. You don't need to download or set up anything in advance.

Step 1 — Open your terminal

The bootstrap is one command that you paste into your terminal. If you've never opened a terminal before, here's how:

On Mac: press ⌘ + Space, type Terminal, press Enter. A black window opens. That's your terminal.
On Windows: click the Start button, type PowerShell, click on Windows PowerShell (the blue icon — NOT the black "cmd" icon). A blue window opens. That's PowerShell. Important: this MUST be PowerShell, not cmd.exe — they look similar but cmd won't work.
On Linux: you already know.

Step 2 — Paste and run the install command

Mac and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adelaidasofia/ai-brain-starter/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell — see Step 1 above):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adelaidasofia/ai-brain-starter/main/bootstrap.ps1 | iex

Paste the command into your terminal window and press Enter. Then leave the window open and let it run — it takes about 5–10 minutes the first time. Don't close the window until you see "Done."

This installs everything: Obsidian, Claude Code, Python, Node.js, graphify, humanizer, claude-mem, notebooklm, meeting-todos, patterns, the Granola MCP, plus the ai-brain-starter skill itself. Safe to re-run anytime — it skips anything already installed.

If you see a password prompt at any point: that's normal. Type your computer's login password and press Enter. You won't see characters as you type — that's also normal. Don't close the window.

Joining an existing team vault

If a teammate has already set up a vault and shared it with you (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, git), you don't need to set up your own structure. Run the bootstrap above, then:

cd "<path to the shared vault>"
claude
/setup-brain join-team

The join-team mode skips structure-creation entirely — it just verifies your install, auto-fixes the directory layout if Claude can't find the team CLAUDE.md (a common issue with shared folders that wrap a single content subfolder), wires your meeting-notes tool, and confirms everything works. Takes about 5 minutes.

Stay updated

This skill is actively improving — new features, better prompts, and more tools get added regularly. Update weekly:

cd ~/.claude/skills/ai-brain-starter && git pull

Or just tell Claude: "Update the ai-brain-starter skill."

After updating, check CHANGELOG.md to see what's new — written in plain English, no jargon.

Step 3 — Start the conversation

When the bootstrap finishes, it tells you it's done. Then:

In the same terminal window (Terminal on Mac/Linux, PowerShell on Windows), type claude and press Enter. This starts Claude Code.
Once Claude Code starts, type /setup-brain and press Enter.

claude
/setup-brain

Claude will walk you through everything from there. No technical knowledge required.

Want the full story first? Read How I Built a Second Brain That Actually Works With AI — the why, the surprises, and what changed.

What Gets Created

Your Vault/
  CLAUDE.md                    # Your memory file — Claude reads this every session
  Meta/
    00 Start Here.md           # Session routing
    Current Priorities.md      # Your top 5 right now
    Open Loops.md              # What's unresolved
    Last Session.md            # What happened last time
    Decision Log.md            # Decisions tracked over time
    Templates/
      Template - Journal Entry.md
      Template - CRM Entry.md
      Template - Meeting Note.md
  Journals/                    # Daily entries
    Monthly Summaries/         # Compressed by month
  CRM/                         # People cards with live queries
  Home/                        # Personal goals, habits, health
  Work/                        # Your projects and career
  Writing/                     # Anything you create
  Books/                       # Book notes
  Psychology/                  # Inner work, therapy, growth

Plus any custom folders based on your life.

Power Tools (Installed During Setup)

Tool	What it does	Command
Humanizer	Strips AI patterns from your writing	`/humanizer`
Graphify	Builds a knowledge graph of your vault	`/graphify .`
Claude-Mem	Remembers past sessions automatically	automatic + `/mem-search`
NotebookLM	Queries your Google NotebookLM notebooks	`/notebooklm`
Weekly Insights	Pattern recognition from your journal week	`/weekly`
Monthly Insights	Deeper trends, therapist + coach observations	`/monthly`
Meeting → To-Do	Extracts your action items from meeting notes	`/meeting-todos`
Nano Banana	Image generation via Google Gemini 3 Pro Image	`/plugin install nano-banana@devon-claude-skills`

These require Homebrew + Python 3.12 + Node.js. The setup walks you through installing them.

Want the full picture of every tool, why it's there, and how they fit together? Read docs/POWER_TOOLS.md — the catalog of every third-party skill, MCP server, and Obsidian plugin this setup wires together, with attribution and source links for each.

After Setup

Daily use

Open Obsidian for visual navigation
Open Claude Code in your vault for AI-powered work
Type /journal for daily journal interviews
Type /humanizer on any draft before publishing

Deep optimization

Type /optimize-brain when you're ready for the weekend pass:

File audit — scan vault, report stats, find the mess
AI chat import & cleanup — export ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini history, keep the gold, delete the noise
CRM standardization — turn people mentions into queryable contacts
Journal compression — monthly summaries from your entries
Domain summaries — one compressed note per life area
Graph cleanup — fix broken links, connect orphans, enrich dead ends
Dashboards — live Dataview queries for contacts, tasks, projects
Wikilink audit — find and link unlinked mentions across the vault
About Me — self-portrait built from your data
Vault health report — final audit with stats and recommendations

The Accountability Rules

Every CLAUDE.md created by this skill includes these rules. Claude is not a yes-machine — it's a thinking partner.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
Stop me if I'm gossiping.
Check me when I'm stubborn.
Tell me the truth even when it hurts.
Tell me when I'm self-sabotaging.
Call me out when I'm making excuses.
Remind me who I said I wanted to be.
Don't let me settle just because it's easier.
Check my ego every time.
Tell me when I'm overthinking everything.
Call me out if I'm playing the victim.
Don't let me stay comfortable if it's keeping me stuck.
Tell me when I'm the problem.
Call me out when I'm avoiding what I need to face.
Tell me when I'm out of alignment with my values.

Who This Is For

Founders who use AI daily and want it to actually know them
Writers who have years of notes scattered everywhere
Anyone who journals (or wants to start)
People who've tried Notion, Roam, Apple Notes, and none of it stuck
Non-technical people — the setup is a conversation, not a config file

Deeper Documentation

docs/POWER_TOOLS.md — every third-party skill, MCP server, and Obsidian plugin this setup uses, with attribution, install commands, and the why behind each
docs/MEMORY_SYSTEM.md — how to make Claude Code accumulate knowledge across sessions using typed memories (the most underrated pattern in this whole setup)
skills/graphify/RUNBOOK.md — the production playbook for running graphify on a large vault, with cost guardrails and lessons from ~5M tokens of real runs
templates/dataview-queries.md — reusable Dataview query library for journals, CRM, AI chats, decision logs
templates/Decision Log.md — template for tracking the how of your decisions so you can learn patterns over time
scripts/build-journal-index.py — builds a fast lookup index over your journal entries, used by /insights and /weekly//monthly
CHANGELOG.md — what's new in plain English

Background

This system was built by Adelaida Diaz-Roa, founder of Onde, across a week of intensive Obsidian + Claude Code optimization. 5,000 notes, 12 years of journals, two books in progress, a startup to raise for — all connected, compressed, and navigable.

Read the full story: How I Built a Second Brain That Actually Works With AI

License

MIT — use it, fork it, make it yours.

Ai Brain Starter