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Self-hosted second brain with MCP

A developer built Brain AI Hub, a portable second brain system that combines a local LLM, markdown vault, semantic search, and MCP hooks for IDE agents. The open-source project enables self-hosted RAG and tool-based agent interactions without relying on cloud services, with one-click deployment to Cursor, Claude Code, and VS Code.

read2 min views1 publishedJun 17, 2026

I run IT and cybersecurity ops by day and tinker in a homelab at night. The problem I kept hitting: useful context from Cursor and Claude Code sessions evaporates when the chat ends. Notes end up scattered. RAG demos are cloud-first. I wanted something I own.

So I built Brain AI Hub  a portable second brain with a local LLM, markdown vault, semantic search, and MCP hooks for IDE agents.

:11434

.brain-vault

, brain-library

, brain-rag

) with one-click deploy to Cursor, Claude Code, VS Code.:7860

for services, chat, GPU/VRAM, API keys, pipeline status.| Edition | Install | |---|---| Windows portable | Install.bat → Start.bat  copy the folder, run on another PC | Linux server | `curl -fsSL …/linux/bootstrap.sh \ |

Install scripts speak English and Polish ({% raw %}locale.env

: LANG=en

or LANG=pl

).

On Windows, Brain deploys stdio MCP configs from the dashboard. On Linux, point Cursor at the SSE gateway:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brain-rag": {
      "url": "http://192.168.1.10:7862/sse/brain-rag"
    }
  }
}

Agents can search your vault, pull library chunks, and run skills without sending data to a third-party memory API.

RAG answers retrieval. MCP gives agents tools  write a note, list vault files, trigger a skill, query the code index. That matches how Cursor and Claude Code actually work: function calls mid-session, not a single embedding search at prompt time.

Python, FastAPI, Ollama, sqlite-vec, PowerShell (Windows), systemd (Linux). Homelab-friendly: MikroTik/UniFi networking, WireGuard, Docker where it helps.

git clone https://github.com/lobrzut/brain.git
cd brain

Open http://127.0.0.1:7860

, connect MCP from the Tools tab, drop a PDF in the library, run a distill job on an old chat export.

Related homelab projects: AI Studio (ComfyUI + ACE-Step) and NetDash (LAN service dashboard).

Feedback and issues welcome on GitHub.

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