brain-health
Skill0 starsChanged 43 days agoMITView on GitHub
Measures the health of the user's second brain with the same rules every month and keeps a history, so this month is compared with last month: broken links, orphan notes, notes outside the frontmatter contract, duplicates, backup files inside the vault, names Obsidian cannot link, and stale project Doors. Answers with a traffic light (green, yellow, red) and what to fix first. Use it for "brain health", "how is my brain doing?", "check my vault", "broken links", "orphan notes", "salud del cerebro", "¿cómo está mi cerebro?", "revisa el vault", "links rotos", and to manage the monthly schedule ("turn on the monthly check", "apaga la revisión mensual"). Bilingual EN+ES.
2 other projects use a version of this.
Adopted by
Most recently taken up by
- t0ddharris/compound-marketingtheir own version, first seen Oct 8, 2026
- day-ai/gtm-braintheir own version, first seen Aug 19, 2026
Other versions2 projects use a version of this.
Word for word · 0
None found.
Edited · 0
None found.
Wrote their own version · 2
- day-ai/gtm-brain★ 9same name
- t0ddharris/compound-marketing★ 1same name
How matches are found. Word for word: the exact same text. Edited: shares passages with this file (“99% same” means 99% of its five-word phrases also appear here; 10% or more counts). Their own version: similar meaning, or, weakest, the same name. We can’t tell which project had it first. Projects are counted among the 200 most-starred candidates, and mentions are links to the repository we found, up to 50 per site, so both counts are a floor.
In this repository8 other files it gives its agents.
- brain-searchSkill
- close-sessionSkill
- obsidian-power-userSkill
- project-advisorSkill
- project-doorSkill
- save-to-obsidianSkill
- second-brain-initSkill
- session-checkpointSkill
The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
3 rules. About 0 are common, 2 are distinctive, and 1 is very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈2
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
1
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Distinctive: line 73
If the monthly run already happened this month, read the history note instead of running it again.
- Distinctive: line 84
Broken links: create the missing note as a short stub, or fix the link to the right name.
- Very specific: line 90
Stale Doors: run project-door on that project to verify it, or set the project status: parked.
≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
Brain Health: the same checkup, every month
A vault rots quietly: a renamed note leaves broken links, a quick save leaves an
orphan, a copy is left as .bak. None of it hurts on the day it happens. Measured once
a month with the same rules, it is caught while it is small.
What it measures
| Measure | What it means | Healthy |
| Notes | How many, and per section 00 to 09 | Growing where the user works |
| Broken links | [[links]] to notes that do not exist | Going down |
| Orphans | Notes nothing links to (MOCs, Doors, logs excluded) | Few, and shrinking |
| No frontmatter | Notes without the properties block | 0 for new notes |
| Contract | % of notes that pass check_frontmatter.py | Going up |
.bak files | Backup copies sitting inside the vault | 0 |
| Duplicates | Notes whose body is an exact copy of another | 0 |
| Bad names | File names with # ^ [ ] | : | 0 |
| Stale Doors | Project Doors not verified in 30 days | 0 |
The light: RED if there are .bak files in the vault or broken links grew more than
10% since the last run. YELLOW if broken links grew at all, the contract % dropped, or
there are bad names or stale Doors. GREEN otherwise. It compares against last month,
not against perfection: an old vault starts with many broken links, and that is fine
as long as the number goes down.
How to run it
T="{{VAULT_PATH}}/.brain/tools"
python3 "$T/brain_health.py" # measure and print; changes nothing
python3 "$T/brain_health.py" --write # also add a row to the history note
python3 "$T/brain_health.py" --write --reindex # the full monthly runThe history lives in 05 AI System/Brain Health History.md: the latest light and its
reasons, the top broken links and orphans, and one row per run. Earlier rows are kept.
The monthly schedule
The kit can run the check by itself on the 1st of every month at 07:00:
bash "{{VAULT_PATH}}/.brain/tools/schedule_health.sh" install # turn it on
bash "{{VAULT_PATH}}/.brain/tools/schedule_health.sh" status # is it on? last log lines
bash "{{VAULT_PATH}}/.brain/tools/schedule_health.sh" remove # turn it off
bash "{{VAULT_PATH}}/.brain/tools/schedule_health.sh" run # run it now, like the schedulemacOS uses launchd, Linux uses cron, Windows gets a one-line schtasks command to
paste. On a Mac with the vault in iCloud, the first run may need Python to have Full
Disk Access (the script says how). The log is .brain/health.log.
How to answer the user
- If the monthly run already happened this month, read the history note instead of running it again.
- Lead with the light and the one reason that matters most.
- Show the measures as a short table, with last month next to this month.
- Give at most three fixes, the most repeated broken link first. Offer to do them.
- Two months in a row not green: offer a deeper review of the vault (contradictions, outdated notes, MOCs that no longer match), which the numbers cannot see.
How to fix what it finds
.bakfiles: move them toArchives/Backups/<date>/. Never delete.- Broken links: create the missing note as a short stub, or fix the link to the right name. One fix often repairs many links.
- Orphans: link each from its MOC or a related note; archive what is truly dead.
- Contract:
python3 "$T/check_frontmatter.py" --alllists each note and what is wrong. Fix the newest notes first. - Bad names: rename the file and let Obsidian update the links.
- Stale Doors: run
project-dooron that project to verify it, or set the projectstatus: parked.
Without Python, do a lighter manual pass: search for .bak files, for [[ links whose
target has no file, and read the Doors' verified: dates.
Changelog
- 2.0.0 (2026-10-02): New skill. Nine measures, traffic light against last month, history note, monthly schedule on macOS, Linux and Windows.
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