Brainmesh keeps notes, files, and agent memory in one private knowledge layer. It works across the devices you control and gives every person or agent only the access they need.
MIT licensed, with no account or required central server.
What changed in our enterprise plan after the last customer calls?
The agent asks for the company strategy scope.
Brainmesh checks the agent, action, scope, and expiry.
Your trusted node decrypts six matching records.
The agent receives those records and the read is recorded.
The model does not receive finance, personal notes, or any other compartment.
Signed history already syncs between macOS, Windows, and Linux machines.
Large files are chunked, resumed, and deduplicated. The test suite covers 4 GB records.
Agent reads are checked against signed grants and leave owner-visible receipts.
iOS and Android are thin clients for capture, search, and approval, not full brain replicas.
The future probably has fewer apps. You ask an agent for what you need, and the agent works against a knowledge layer you control.
I kept my second brain in Git for more than six years. Git kept the files and their history, but it never answered who should know what. Cloud drives made syncing easier, but they still made one product the center of the system.
Brainmesh should be quiet infrastructure. Your files stay useful as files. The agents you already use become the main interface. A phone can still capture something or ask you to approve a sensitive read, but there is no new workspace to maintain all day.
Open its app, organize its database, copy context into it, and teach every teammate where everything lives.
Ask the agent you already use. Brainmesh finds the allowed knowledge, returns the answer, and records the access.
The shape changes as more people join. The basic rule does not: knowing the bytes is different from having permission to share them.
A laptop, an always-on Mac mini, and a phone can each hold only what they need. Personal, health, work, and secret material can live in separate compartments. Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Hermes, or screenpipe can use the same brain without receiving the same access.
The company root defines the organization. Engineering, finance, customer support, and each project can use separately encrypted compartments. Employees receive exact roles. Keyless admins can nominate access without holding role keys, and agents use scoped grants.
This authority model exists at the CLI layer today. A polished admin product, managed escrow, and company recovery service do not exist yet.
Plaintext and brain keys stay on enrolled devices. Peers, blind relays, and object storage move encrypted records and chunks without receiving the key that opens them.
The relay and object store never receive the brain key.
It does not replace filesystems, Git, or object storage. It adds the identity, history, encryption, and permission model that agents need across all of them.
| dimension | filesystem | Git | object storage | iCloud / Dropbox | brainmesh |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mental model | A mutable path tree | A commit graph over files | A bucket of keyed blobs | A provider-synced folder | Signed records, encrypted chunks, and grants |
| history | Files are overwritten unless snapshots exist | Commits, branches, and merges | Versioning is optional | Conflicts often become copies | Versions are append-only and divergent heads stay explicit |
| access | OS users and ACLs | Repository credentials | Bucket IAM | Accounts and shares | Signed capabilities with scope and expiry |
| agent access | The agent inherits shell privileges | The agent receives a repository credential | The agent receives a cloud credential | The agent relies on a provider connector | The agent receives a narrow MCP or HTTP grant and each read leaves a receipt |
| operator visibility | The local OS and apps can see files | The host often holds plaintext | Client encryption can hide plaintext | The provider controls the default boundary | Relays and buckets receive ciphertext but never the brain key |
| best at | Live application files | Source collaboration | Durable, scalable bytes | Consumer folder convenience | Private cross-device knowledge for people, companies, and agents |
Brainmesh is useful because it says where its protection stops.
Use a filesystem for live application semantics. Brainmesh records durable meaning, bytes, and history.
Revocation stops future authorized reads. It cannot recall plaintext that somebody already received or copied.
An owner-controlled node holding the right key checks the grant and opens the permitted records.
If a hosted model receives a permitted record, treat that record as disclosed to the model provider.
Authentication, rate limits, abuse controls, backups, and monitoring still matter.
The protocol, CLI, sync, files, grants, recovery, MCP, and thin mobile clients exist. A polished consumer and admin product does not.
The npm preview compiles the Rust CLI locally. Preserve an enrolled key separately from the encrypted copies of your data.
read the setup and threat model →$ npm install -g brainmesh
$ brainmesh start
$ brainmesh join mini
$ brainmesh write "a thought"
$ brainmesh sync
# inspect history, peers, and grants
$ brainmesh statusfree software, built in the open
Brainmesh is MIT licensed and built by the screenpipe team.