/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 🟢/🟡/🔴:

1. 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.
2. Index _brain_e5.npy — how fresh (🟡 if the reindex lags >48h).
3. TurnState ledger — how many turns recorded (memory Phase 1), when the last one was.
4. Nightly distillation — candidates in quarantine + when the last run happened.
5. 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], then brain_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]]).

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Like this skill? It is one of 100 in 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.

Flagships worth a look on their own: secondop-panel (a second opinion from a panel of external models), claude-memory-tidy (stop your agent's memory from rotting), telegram-mcp-kit (your own Telegram over MCP in about 15 minutes).

Author: Anton Dziatkovskii, Palo Alto AI Research Lab. Telegram @tonydzi - WhatsApp +1 341 222 9178 - X @Tony_Stef_

Engineers: want to test-drive this setup? Message me. I hand out free starter seeds to engineers who test and report back, and custom skill requests are welcome.