brain-ops

Brain Operations — The Ambient Context Layer

Recall relevant context before responding. Save explicit requests with provenance; automatic capture is off until the user opts in. Reading this skill does not enable capture, delegation, or paid enrichment. A chat-only instruction suppresses writes for that turn, including when standing capture is enabled.

Convention: See skills/conventions/brain-first.md for the 5-step lookup protocol. Convention: See skills/conventions/quality.md for citation and back-link rules.

Memory verbs (MEMORY_VERBS v1, gbrain ≥ 0.43). Over MCP, prefer the five core memory verbs for the read/write cycle: remember(fact, provenance, ttl?) to save a single durable fact (mandatory provenance; dedupes + supersedes), recall(query | entity, budget_tokens) to read it back budget-packed, entity(name) for a zero-LLM card, synthesize(question) for the expensive cross-page answer, forget(id) to withdraw active memory (history, source material, and backups may remain). context_pack and delta complete the seven-verb surface. Use remember instead of extract_facts when you already have ONE formed fact; put_page / add_link / add_timeline_entry stay the page/graph write path. Fall back to the classic ops when the verbs aren't on the surface. Contract: docs/protocol/MEMORY_VERBS_v1.md.

Tight-budget page questions: explicitly use recall({query: "zebra telescope", budget_tokens: 75, budget_policy: "query_first"}) so ranked page evidence packs before recent facts. CLI: gbrain recall --query 'zebra telescope' --budget-tokens 75 --budget-policy query_first --json. Keep entity-first, event/session-filtered and fact-focused questions on their existing facts-first route; do not change context_pack. Costs are character-based estimates, and an oversized first item is dropped without skipping or truncation. Read budget_packing before interpreting an empty result as missing memory. See skills/query/SKILL.md for the MCP request and caller example. Guidance is not native-harness activation: adoption remains unverified until a fresh conversation is observed making the opted-in call.

Choose a readback path that can see the intended visibility. Trusted local CLI callers can recall and withdraw private facts. Every MCP caller, including stdio, and a thin CLI connected to MCP currently have world-only fact recall and withdrawal. A request to remember does not authorize making real private information world-visible. Use a trusted local write/readback path for private memory when available. If only remote access is available, a successful private write receipt confirms storage, but private recall remains unverified; explain that limit and the trusted local path needed for private readback or withdrawal. Do not widen visibility or request broader OAuth scopes merely to make verification pass. For an MCP connection test, use only a harmless synthetic visibility: "world" fixture with the user's test authorization, retain its ID, and withdraw it afterward.

<REDACTED:pattern> in a result (for example <REDACTED:url_credentials> or <REDACTED:high_entropy_assignment>) means the brain holds a credential-shaped value there and withheld it from this response; the stored page is unchanged. Tell the user which kind of value was withheld and that it is readable on the brain host. Do not retry other operations to recover it, and do not echo a guess. A credential the user asked you to remember is withheld from remote recall by design: every MCP caller, including stdio, and a thin CLI connected to MCP is remote, so only gbrain recall run on the brain host shows it as written. Docs: docs/guides/write-refusals.md#secret-scan-refusals-and-redaction.

Keyless brains: when extract_facts returns skipped: extraction_unavailable, YOU are the extractor — pull the facts from the turn yourself and write each one via remember with kind set (event | preference | commitment | belief | fact — those five are the frozen protocol enum; the idea kind the extractor and DB carry is NOT one of them) and the visibility the envelope's agent_action names (default private — pin it; remember defaults to world), or author a ## Facts fence on the entity page. A skipped: extraction_failed envelope (server-side extractor errored on this turn; reason names why) invites the same manual remember fallback for that turn — automatic extraction stays on for future writes.