Free, open source, for developers
Dev Brain
A folder you open in Claude Code. It remembers your stack, your projects, your wins. Drafts LinkedIn posts in your voice. Levels you up from your first AI tool to building agents.
Zero API keys. Zero accounts. Markdown files on your disk.
Why every developer should have a brain
I came back to code after twelve years away. I tried Claude Code, Cursor, V0, Bolt. The tools were great. The workflow around them was a mess.
Every session started from zero. I had to re-explain my stack. Re-explain what I was building. Re-explain how I write. The AI was working in the dark every time.
So I built this brain. It is a folder I open in Claude Code. It knows who I am, what I am working on, and how I talk. The skills run my week, draft my posts, and track what I am learning.
I shipped nine products in ten months with it. The brain is what made that possible. It is not magic. It is a folder of Markdown files and a set of conventions. Anyone can use it.
Thirteen starter skills
You say the trigger. The skill runs. Zero API keys, zero MCP servers, zero setup. Everything in plain Markdown so you can read it, edit it, and write your own.
"set up my brain"
brain-setup
First session interview. Fills in who you are, your stack, what you are building, where you want to go.
"where am I / what's next"
coach
Your current level, your streak graph, and the exact gap to the next level. Verified against real artifacts.
"start my day / end my day"
daily-log
Creates today's log, captures wins, records the next step. Builds a streak you can see.
"TIL: closures capture variables, not values"
til
Logs the learning, links it to your wiki, grows your knowledge layer one fact at a time.
"process my inbox"
inbox-triage
Routes everything you dropped into inbox to the right home. You confirm. Nothing gets lost.
"ingest this / query the wiki"
wiki
Turns raw sources you drop in (course notes, transcripts, articles) into linked knowledge pages.
"plan my quarter"
quarter-plan
Guided 12 week plan. One or two real goals, a weekly scorecard, no theatre.
"weekly review"
weekly-review
Snapshot of the week. Evidence from your logs and commits, scorecard, next week's top 5.
"draft a post about what I shipped"
content-draft
Build-in-public content in YOUR voice. Pulls from your daily logs and projects. You edit, you ship.
"I met with Jane"
person-update
Creates or updates a person's profile, captures the meeting, sets the next step.
"new project: cli-tool"
new-project
Stamps a project folder with outcome and next action. One folder per build.
"build my resume"
resume
ATS optimized resume, pre-filled from your brain. PDF and DOCX export.
"online presence"
online-presence
Five day program. LinkedIn, personal brand, portfolio plan, GitHub showcase. Sequenced, not random.
From level 0 to level 10
A built-in path from “never used Claude Code” to “building agents and shipping in public.” You graduate each level by real artifacts in your brain. The coach verifies them. No tests, no quizzes.
- 00
Setup
Your brain knows who you are. You can start your day with one command.
- 01
Daily workflow
You log every day. The streak compounds. You can see what you shipped this week.
- 02
Claude Code fundamentals
You stop being scared of the CLI. You read context. You scope tasks.
- 03
Custom skills
You write your first skill. Now the brain works the way YOU think.
- 04
First ship
Something is live. A real link a real person could visit. The first one is hardest.
- 05
Tool landscape
You can pick the right tool for the job. Cursor, Bolt, V0, Codex. Not just Claude Code.
- 06
MCP integrations
Your brain talks to your world. Calendar, GitHub, Linear, Notion. Whatever you live in.
- 07
Building agents
You build your first agent that does work for you. Specific, narrow, useful.
- 08
Autonomous agents
Agents run on a schedule, decide for themselves, and tell you what happened.
- 09
Build in public
You ship and you write about it. The audience compounds. The work compounds.
- 10
Design for others
You build tools other developers use. Open source. Templates. Brains. This one was Level 10 for me.
Two rules that keep it working
Most second-brain systems collapse because there are too many conventions to remember. The whole structure of this brain rests on two rules.
Rule 1
raw/ is yours. wiki/ is Claude's.
You drop source material (course notes, transcripts, articles) into raw/ and Claude never edits it. Claude distills it into wiki/ pages and you never edit those. Two layers. No conflicts.
Rule 2
Nothing gets deleted.
Outdated stuff moves to archive/, preserving its folder path. The brain only grows. You can always recover what you wrote last quarter.
Who this is for
For you if
- You are learning AI coding and want a system, not a stack of tabs.
- You ship side projects while working full time.
- You are coming back to code after a break.
- You are in college or bootcamp and want a real workflow.
- You build in public and want drafts that sound like you.
- You are a senior engineer adopting AI tools and want them organized.
Not for you if
- You want a SaaS dashboard, not a folder of Markdown.
- You will not open Claude Code or a similar tool.
- You want a finished system. This one you customize as you go.
- You want to be told what to build. The brain works on what YOU pick.
Built by me at 52, twelve years after my last commit
I am Vinod. Twenty-five years in software, twelve of those in management, now back at the keyboard building Sucana with my two co-founders.
When I came back to code, the tools were better than anything I had used before. But I had nothing tying them together. I lost an hour every morning reloading my own context.
This brain is the thing that fixed it. I am sharing it because if you are in your forties, fifties, or just starting, you should not have to build the scaffolding from scratch.
I write about all of this in Build Notes, my weekly newsletter. One AI build story a week. Subscribe here.
Free, open source, MIT
Get the brain
Clone it. Open it in Claude Code. Say “set up my brain.” You will be talking to it in five minutes.
Common questions
Why is it free?
I built this for me first. Once it worked, it felt wrong to gate it. I make my living building products, not selling brains. If you ship anything because of it, I want to read about it.
Do I need Claude Code?
Yes, this brain is built for Claude Code. It also works in VS Code with the Claude Code extension. You can adapt it to Codex or Cursor with some editing, but the skills are written for Claude.
I am brand new to coding. Is this for me?
Level 00 is for someone who has never touched a command line. The coach skill meets you exactly where you are. You graduate by doing real work, not by ticking boxes.
I have 10 years of experience. Is this still useful?
Yes. The brain levels do not assume coding inexperience. They assume AI-tool inexperience. A senior engineer can be at Level 03 (custom skills) on day one. The coach figures it out.
Where does my data live?
On your disk. The brain is just a folder of Markdown files. No cloud, no database, no account. Make it a private GitHub repo if you want a backup. That is the whole story.
Can I customize it?
All of it. Skills are Markdown files. The folder structure is a convention, not a system. You can rename, delete, or rewrite anything. The two rules in the README are the only structural ones.
How is this different from Obsidian or Notion?
Those store notes. This runs your week. The skills do work for you: plan your quarter, draft a post, build a resume, log a daily, level up. The notes are just the substrate.
Do I need to pair it with the portfolio site?
No. The brain works standalone. If you also clone the build-kit portfolio edition into the same workspace, the brain will help you draft blog posts for it. That is the only crossover.