Gbrain Lite Agent Skill

Lightweight personal knowledge base — markdown + YAML frontmatter structured notes with full-text search and cross-referencing for AI agents

691 tokens

context cost

the whole folder, loaded on every use

files

instructions only

copies elsewhere

how many repositories repackaged it

365

stars on the repo

on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository

npx skills add https://github.com/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills --skill gbrain-lite

The instruction itself

9 sections, as written by the author

GBrain Lite — Lightweight Personal Knowledge Base

> Organize books, people, concepts, and news items from conversations into a searchable, cross-referenced markdown knowledge base.

Workspace

Knowledge base directory: brain/
Subdirectories by type: books/ people/ meetings/ ideas/ articles/ projects/ news/
One entry = one .md file
News entries by date: news/YYYY-MM-DD/

Workflow

Trigger check — Book/person/concept/news mentioned in conversation → proactively check brain
Search — Full-text search in brain/ directory (ripgrep/grep)
Decide
Existing entry → reference it, update if needed
No entry + important → create immediately
No entry + uncertain → ask user
Create — Write brain/{type}/{slug}.md
Slug: lowercase/hyphenated
Must include YAML frontmatter (title, type, date, tags, summary)
Cross-reference — Update links field in related entries
Sync — Keep key entry index in agent memory

Rules

Don't dump long content directly into agent memory — prefer brain
Don't create entries without title and date
Don't skip the summary field — search and listing depend on it
Don't manually write updated — it auto-updates on save
News entries must use item_id as dedup key (format: github:owner/repo / hn:12345 / arxiv:url)
Don't do full overwrite updates on existing entries — use targeted patches

Validation

[ ] New entry has complete frontmatter (title, type, date, tags, summary)
[ ] Full-text search finds the new entry
[ ] News entries contain item_id + first_seen + star_history (GitHub entries)
[ ] Agent memory usage below 90%, otherwise trigger distillation to brain

Pitfalls

Brain vs Memory confusion

Symptom: Long-form content consumed all agent memory space
Root cause: Everything dumped into memory instead of brain
Fix: >500 chars → brain entry; memory only keeps index pointers. (Fixed: 2026-05-12)

Missing item_id on news entries

Symptom: Duplicate news entries accumulate, dedup impossible
Root cause: Agent skipped item_id field when creating news entries
Fix: Always include item_id for news entries, validated in creation workflow

References

references/garry-tan-gbrain-inspiration.md — GBrain system design reference

Other skills for the same job

different authors, same section of the catalogue

Plugin Settings

by anthropics

vendor ×2

This skill should be used when the user asks about "plugin settings", "store plugin configuration", "user-configurable plugin", ".local.md files", "plugin state files", "read YAML frontmatter", "per-project plugin settings", or wants to make plugin behavior configurable. Documents the .claude/plugin-name.local.md pattern for storing plugin-specific configuration with YAML frontmatter and markdown content.

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Persistent memory and context management for AI agents using OpenContext. Keep context across sessions/repos/dates, store conclusions, and provide document search workflows.

> PARA method knowledge management for Obsidian vaults. Use this skill whenever the user wants to organize notes using PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive), classify a note into a PARA category, route a note to the right vault folder, normalize frontmatter fields, run a PARA hygiene review, suggest archiving, audit vault structure, or process new knowledge inputs into an existing PARA-based vault. Also trigger when the user mentions inbox processing, vault cleanup, note classification, PARA review, or asks "where does this note belong?". Works with existing Obsidian skills (obsidian-markdown, obsidian-cli) — never replaces them.

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N8n:spec Driven Development

by n8n-io

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Keeps implementation and specs in sync. Use when working on a feature that has a spec in .agents/specs/, when the user says /spec, or when starting implementation of a documented feature. Also use when the user asks to verify implementation against a spec or update a spec after changes.

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Knowledge Agent

by thedotmack

Build and query AI-powered knowledge bases from claude-mem observations. Use when users want to create focused "brains" from their observation history, ask questions about past work patterns, or compile expertise on specific topics.

622 tokens

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take cosmicstack-labs/gbrain-lite from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.