Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx skills add tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit --skill braingit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kitWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/brain)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/brain"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/brain/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/brain"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/brain.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00068 | $0.00866 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00027 | $0.00346 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00014 | $0.00173 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00087 |
Grade A, and why
brain scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 48 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
/brain — second-brain health at one glance
🧒 When reporting to a non-technical operator, end with a short plain-words recap (rule
eli5-always).
Catches SILENT breakage of the memory/RAG stack (the things that kept breaking month after month: the reindex, the local search server, the memory pilot). Read-only, 0 tokens.
What it does (one script)
python $IMPORTS_ROOT/brain_health.py
Checks 5 things and colors them 🟢/🟡/🔴:
- Search server on its local port — alive or not (if it's down, auto-recall silently disappears); also shows whether the graph-assisted mode is on.
- Index
_brain_e5.npy— how fresh (🟡 if the reindex lags >48h). - TurnState ledger — how many turns recorded (memory Phase 1), when the last one was.
- Nightly distillation — candidates in quarantine + when the last run happened.
- A/B direct-vs-graph recall — how many runs + the operator's verdicts (👍/👎).
Writes a dashboard $OBSIDIAN_VAULT/_Dashboards/Brain-Health.html (the operator reads with their eyes, [[prefer-visual-dashboards]]). Exit code 0/1/2 = ok/warn/red (for scripts).
When to fix (on 🔴/🟡)
- 🔴 search server down → run the restart script (as admin, see [[always-on-memory-pilot]]); or reboot (the at-logon task brings it up).
- 🟡 index lagging →
gpu_check.py [--kill], thenbrain_embed_update.py [--wait-gpu 10]([[reindex-routine]]). - 🟡 ledger empty → fine if memory Phase 1 was just enabled (it fills from the next sessions on).
What it does NOT do
It doesn't fix anything and doesn't write to the vault. It's a diagnostic. Fixing is a separate explicit step (the "read before you fix" rule, [[verify-existing-before-proposing]]).
Like this skill? It is part of second-brain-starter-kit: the second brain we built for ourselves and run every day at Palo Alto AI Research Lab. Install the whole set with npx skills add tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit. Everything is open source and free, so take what you need.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- yesterday Changed 45862bb1dec0
- 14d ago Changed · -1 lines 749a68df22f2
- 19d ago Changed · +17 lines · -46 tokens per session 94a9c74d964d
- 28d ago Changed · -19 lines · +46 tokens per session b4a98c0604d4
- 1mo ago Changed · +2 lines · -9 tokens per session 4ee6e10adada
- 1mo ago First seen · 49 lines · 77 tokens per session scan A 13921c8a4ac6
brain is a skill published in the GitHub repository tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit (12 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 866 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.
Other skills, from other repositories
obsidian-bases
Explain, draft, and validate Obsidian Bases .base files with filters, formulas, properties, summaries, and table, card, list, or version-gated kanban views. Use for Obsidian Bases, database-like vault views, dynamic tables, reading lists, task trackers, filters, formulas, summaries, and .base file edits.
save
Save a user-selected answer, decision, insight, or session summary into an Obsidian vault as one reviewed transaction. Use only when the user explicitly asks to preserve specific conversation content, not when they supply a file or URL to ingest. Triggers: /save, save this, save that answer, file this conversation…
wiki-retrieve
Build and query a vault-local contextual BM25 retrieval index with optional multilingual Nomic cosine reranking; use for retrieve, hybrid retrieval, BM25, rerank, contextual retrieval, chunk search, vault search, semantic search, find relevant passages, or retrieval diagnostics. Derived caches stay under .vault-meta…
wiki-fold
Create a bounded, extractive, structurally idempotent rollup of recent Obsidian wiki log entries, with dry-run preview by default and one optional transaction apply. Use for manual log compression without modifying child pages. Triggers: fold the log, run a fold, run wiki-fold, log rollup, roll up log entries, commit…
wiki-mode
Read or configure the vault filing methodology and suggest destinations for planned knowledge creation under Generic, LYT, PARA, or Zettelkasten. Use for wiki mode, methodology mode, what is my vault mode, set vault mode, switch to PARA, use LYT, Zettelkasten setup, change mode, configure mode, or methodology routing.…
wiki-cli
Detect and use the official Obsidian command-line interface for read-only vault access; use for wiki-cli, Obsidian CLI, Obsidian read, Obsidian search, vault transport, which transport, transport detection, backlinks, tags, or Obsidian command line. Mutations always go through the claude-obsidian transaction core.