{{ s.label }}
Open source · MIT · Local-first·Runs on your machine The Curator — the context engine

Your brain. Your team's brain. Your agents' brain.

A local app that turns what you read into a compounding wiki, shares it with a cohort, and holds your projects' context, foundations, working state and knowledge, so any agent in any harness resumes where the last one stopped. Plain markdown, in your own repo.

Ask about The Curator
docs user guide shared brain project context
{{ liveLabel }}
{{ m.who }}
{{ m.body }}
{{ m.chips }}
Reading the documentation…
You're chatting with an AI assistant · answers come from the-curator documentation · nothing you type is stored on this site · Powered by Lumina
Install How it works GitHub
entity concept summary · plain .md · your disk · no database
02Two ways in

Two ways in. The same files underneath.

{{ gfxWaysWrite }}
You write, research or market

A second brain that compounds.

Sources become linked pages that grow denser. Months later, ask — in the app or over MCP — and get the why back.

→ Start with a domain
{{ gfxWaysRun }}
You run AI agents across sessions

Context that outlives the window.

Each session reads the project's documents and last handoff, then saves a new one. The next session — another tool, another computer — starts there.

→ Start with a project

Not two products. A book or a research programme outlives any one session — that is where the two meet.

03Quick start

Install in the way that fits your machine.

macOS gets a packaged app with a menu bar widget. Windows and Linux run the same app locally in your browser. Any platform can hand the whole install to a coding agent with one prompt.

Recommended

The Mac app

A .dmg for Apple Silicon and Intel, published side by side. Includes the menu bar widget and in-app updates. Pick the build for your Mac on the releases page.

Download for macOS Latest release · Apple Silicon or Intel · you choose on GitHub
One-liner

Browser install with a Dock launcher

Runs the app in your browser and adds a launcher to the Dock. The script is readable before you run it.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/talirezun/the-curator/main/install.sh | bash
Read install.sh before running it
Manual setup

Run it locally in your browser

There is no packaged Windows app yet. The Curator runs as a local server on your machine and opens at localhost:3333. Needs Node.js 18+ and git.

git clone https://github.com/talirezun/the-curator.git
cd the-curator && npm install
set CURATOR_NO_OPEN=1 && node src/server.js
Open the Windows setup guide
Easier

Let a coding agent do it

If you use Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or a similar agent, paste one prompt and it verifies Node, clones the repository, installs and starts the server for you.
Manual setup

Run it locally in your browser

There is no packaged Linux app yet. The Curator runs as a local server on your machine and opens at localhost:3333. Needs Node.js 18+ and git.

git clone https://github.com/talirezun/the-curator.git
cd the-curator && npm install
node src/server.js
Open the Linux setup guide
Easier

Let a coding agent do it

If you use Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or a similar agent, paste one prompt and it verifies Node, clones the repository, installs and starts the server for you.
install-prompt.txt · paste into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any coding agent 
{{ agentPrompt }}
Works on every platform

One prompt, and the agent installs it

The prompt checks for Node.js 18+, clones the repository into your home directory, installs dependencies and, on a Mac, builds the app. It never asks for your API key: you paste that into Settings yourself.

The best route for Windows and Linux, where the app runs in your browser.

Section 20 of the user guide covers this route
Ingest and chat need one API key: Gemini, Anthropic or OpenRouter Agent memory and the MCP bridge work without a key Keys stay in .curator-config.json on your machine Cost and free tier
04One substrate, three brains

The same markdown files serve you, your team and your agents.

Nothing is exported or duplicated between the three. Each kind of context behaves differently when something is written to it.

Compounded knowledge · the wiki

Accumulates. Entities, concepts and summaries, cross-linked into a graph; a new source updates the pages that exist instead of duplicating them.

Volatile state · brief, handoff, journal

Supersedes. Where a piece of work stands, per project; each save replaces the last, so a resolved blocker cannot come back.

Canonical documents · foundations

Replaced whole. A project's architecture, decisions, conventions and roadmap, held verbatim — never merged, never paraphrased, never summarised by a model.

{{ gfxBrain }}
Your brain

Read once. Keep the structure.

Ingest a PDF, a Markdown file or a text file and get a summary page plus the entity and concept pages it earns, all interlinked. Every new source deepens the pages that already exist.

{{ gfxTeam }}
Your team's brain

A cohort that reads together.

Opt one domain into a Shared Brain. Contributors push synthesised summaries to a private repository; the collective wiki pulls back as a read-only mirror. Attribution and GDPR erasure built in.

{{ gfxAgents }}
Your agents' brain

Handoffs that survive the session.

Done, decided, blocked — a handoff scoped per project, and the canonical documents beside it. A new session, in any harness, on any machine, reads both in one call and picks up where the last one stopped.

→ How the context engine works
05The context engine

The context a project runs on, carried between sessions.

Three kinds of context, three different write rules. The loop below runs once per session, in whatever you happened to open.

{{ gfxContextLoop }}
①

Added, not ingested

You write the standing brief. The documents a project runs on arrive verbatim: mirrored from a folder or repository, imported from a file, or written in the app.

②

One call at the start

get_project_context returns the brief, the last handoff, and the documents that changed since the session before. Any MCP client, any model, and there is a shell command too.

③

A complete save before the stop

The save replaces the last one rather than adding to it, because a resolved blocker must not come back. Every save is the whole state.

One project, many agent tools, many computers — and the Context screen shows what is ready and what is not.

06How it works

Two short paths through the same files.

One builds the wiki, the other carries a project. Four steps each, and most people end up walking both.

{{ gfxPipeline }}
{{ p.label }}
{{ s.n }}{{ s.kicker }}

{{ s.title }}

{{ s.body }}
07The bridge

One bridge, two front doors.

The same local files, reachable two ways: an MCP client, or your shell. Neither needs the app running.

MCP

24 MCP tools

Seventeen read, seven write. Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, Cursor and any MCP client spawn the bridge as a local process. All 24 can be exercised from the app with no paid calls.

CLI

my-curator, in your shell

context, save, hook, doctor, hook-log, resolve, install-hooks. The same project and the same handoff without an MCP client at all; doctor reports what is wired here and writes nothing.

Honesty

What is measured

The Curator keeps a record for fifteen agent tools. Claude Code's hooks are measured; an Antigravity handoff was seen live across two Macs; the rest say "not measured" until they are.

The meter counts, per project: sessions, how many started by reading the context, how many saved before stopping. From a local log with no arguments and no content in it.

08The app

Same app on the Mac and in the browser. Every screen writes files you can open.

Three places — Chat, Domains and Context.

The Curator {{ appShot.path }}
{{ appShotPicture }}
09The menu bar widget · Mac app

What your agents are working on, one click from the menu bar.

Every handoff an agent saves through MCP shows up here: which project, which tool, how long ago. The save pulse tells you the discipline is holding. Copy a row's resume prompt and the next session, in any harness, starts from that state instead of from zero.

Working onearly-computing / exhibit-site
Save pulse{{ gfxPulse }}7 days · 34 saves
Written byClaude Code · Antigravity
User guide §6b: the menu bar icon →
{{ gfxPulseTiny }} Mon 14 Sep 11:12
{{ gfxPulse }}7 days · 34 saves · 2 tools
Active · last 24 h
{{ sc.name }}· {{ sc.when }}{{ sc.sub }}
Idle · 1 projectlecture-series 6 d
Knowledge · 2 domains
Open Project Context…Open The CuratorSettings…
Updated 11:12
Quit The Curator⌘Q
10Why plain files

Curation, not retrieval. Files, not a vendor.

Everything The Curator writes is markdown with YAML frontmatter in a folder you choose. Open it in Obsidian, grep it, commit it, feed it to a different model next year. Nothing here is locked to one AI, one tool or one company.

{{ gfxAccumulate }}
Your brain · your team's brain

Knowledge accumulates.

Every source adds to existing pages instead of duplicating them. RAG re-derives knowledge on every query and forgets; The Curator compiles it once, during ingest, and keeps it current, so the graph gets denser rather than just bigger.

{{ gfxSupersede }}
Your agents' brain

State supersedes.

Each save replaces the previous handoff, because a resolved blocker must not come back. One supersedable page per project and scope: what is done, what was decided, what is blocked right now.

Retrieval at query time
  • Scans raw files on every question
  • Structure inferred, then discarded
  • Contradictions stay invisible
Curation at write time
  • Reads once, writes persistent pages
  • New sources update existing pages
  • Conflicts flagged where they conflict
domains/articles/concepts/agent-memory.mdupdated 2026-09-10
---
type: concept
title: Agent Memory
domain: articles
sources: 4
tags: [type/concept, agents, memory]
---
Agent memory is the persisted working state a coding
agent carries between sessions: what is done, what was
decided, what is blocked.

Related: [[agent-memory-compounding]] ·
[[session-state]] · [[project-rollup]]
Entities: [[claude-code]] · [[opencode]] · [[codex]]
Summary: [[the-agent-memory-problem]]
Read the essay on why knowledge is kept as files you own →
11Compounding knowledge · articles and research

Every article builds on the last. So does the research.

The thinking behind The Curator was written in public, one essay at a time. Read them in order and the argument compounds the way a wiki does: each one links back to what came before.

All essays on Substack →
research/ · open to contributions

The research lives in the repository.

Articles, notes and experiments behind the design decisions, kept as markdown next to the code. Read it, cite it, or open a pull request with your own findings.

Open research/ on GitHub →
Knowledge immortality and the second brainresearch/articles · the founding essay Knowledge accumulates, state supersedesresearch paper · why the wiki and working state are two stores Working statedocs · handoffs across session, model, tool and machine Shared Brain architecturedocs · concept, decisions, compliance, roadmap Field Notesthe published surface of a Curator knowledge graph
12Who is behind The Curator

Built by Dr. Tali Režun with the help of community.

Dr. Tali Režun lectures at COTRUGLI Business School and built The Curator in cooperation with Co-Lab, the school's innovation lab. The COTRUGLI cohort used it as it was built and shaped what it became.

Early adopters, first users and community members gave the feedback that made it usable. Thank you for the time you invested; it was the most valuable input this project has had.

The project is MIT-licensed, apart from ten source-available Shared Brain backend files. There is no hosted tier and nothing to sell: your API key talks to the provider you chose and nothing passes through anyone else.

Field Notes COTRUGLI Business School MIT licence
·Get in touch

DMs are open. Bugs go to GitHub.

X@talirezun LinkedInin/talirezun Substacktalirezun.substack.com GitHub issuesversion · platform · what you did
13Source & licence

Open source. MIT. Yours to fork.

If The Curator is useful to you, a star on GitHub is how other people find it.

Star on GitHub Install

Ask anything about The Curator. The assistant answers from the project's documentation.
{{ m.who }}
{{ m.body }}
{{ m.chips }}
 Reading the documentation…