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Multi-brain: project brains + a federated central hub

Talamus uses the "Federated Hub with Project-Local Ownership" model: every project owns its brain; your personal central brain can read across all the registered brains, without absorbing them.

The pieces

  • Project brain — a folder with talamus.json (created by talamus init, which always targets the current directory). It owns its notes.
  • Central brain — talamus init --global (lives under TALAMUS_HOME, default ~/talamus/default). Durable personal knowledge + the federation hub.
  • Registry — TALAMUS_HOME/registry.json: every brain on the machine, with type (project/central/archive) and the federated/sensitive flags. init registers automatically; talamus brains register PATH adds existing ones.
  • Federated index — talamus brains index: a rebuildable pointer index (brain + note + path + metadata). Never source truth: every answer reads the real note from the owning brain.

Scope policies

ask / search / recall / overview accept --scope:

policy meaning
project-only only the current brain
central-only only your central brain
project+central default inside a project — local first, hub as fallback
all (--all-brains) every registered, federated, non-sensitive brain

Results carry markers — [project], [central], [project:name] — so you always know where knowledge came from. Brains marked sensitive are excluded from all unless you opt in. Missing brains degrade to warnings, never failures.

Moving knowledge

Writes go to the current project by default; promotion to the hub is explicit:

talamus brains promote "Pattern Retry" --from lavoro --to default

Promotion preserves the note id, provenance and history, and records the origin.

Quick reference

talamus brains                      # list + flags
talamus brains use <name>           # selected global (when no project is found)
talamus brains set <name> --sensitive true
talamus brains index status
talamus where --json                # which brain resolved, and why