gbrain/docs/guides/bootstrap.md

GBrain Bootstrap — your harness as your agent

gbrain bootstrap turns a Claude Code or Codex session into a persistent personal agent: identity files rendered from your own answers, a local PGLite brain, per-turn context, session-triggered schedules, and a private GitHub repo as the agent's durable, portable body. This guide is the full contract — what gets installed, what runs when, what it can and cannot do, and how to undo all of it.

Normative design docs: AGENT_BOOTSTRAP_DESIGN.md (scope) and AGENT_BOOTSTRAP_PLAN.md (implementation). The paste block lives in the README; the runbook your agent follows is BOOTSTRAP_FOR_AGENTS.md at the repo root, fetched at the latest-stable ref.

What gets installed, exactly

Piece	Where	Runs when
Identity files (SOUL/USER/MEMORY/AGENTS/CLAUDE/HEARTBEAT/ACCESS_POLICY/GITHUB)	your workspace folder	loaded at session start
agent.json manifest + brain/, memory/, skills/, state/	workspace	—
Local brain (PGLite)	~/.gbrain/ (never in the repo)	while a session's MCP serve is open
MCP registration (gbrain serve)	Claude Code: project scope by default; Codex: user-global (no scope flag)	spawned by your harness per session
Hooks (Claude Code, ON by default)	local installs: .claude/settings.local.json (gitignored); cloud sandboxes: the COMMITTED .claude/settings.json (PATH-resolved, fail-open commands)	each prompt; fail-open; --no-hooks opts out at install, GBRAIN_HOOKS=0 disables at runtime
Per-turn persistence	Stop hook → debounced, detached scan-gated push (per workspace; 5 min default, every turn in cloud sandboxes)	after each assistant turn; GBRAIN_STOP_PUSH=0 disables; GBRAIN_STOP_PUSH_DEBOUNCE_MIN / config hooks.stop_push_debounce_min tune it
Session persistence	SessionEnd hook → scan-gated commit+push	at session end (note: the harness never fires SessionEnd on /exit — the per-turn push is what covers that)
Push-failure visibility	next turn's context + a user-visible notice; re-announces every 30 min while failing	whenever a background push fails
Optional background job (consent-gated)	git post-commit auto-push + launchd/cron 30-min pull (pull job skipped honestly on hosts without a scheduler)	while logged in
Private GitHub repo	your account, created by bootstrap repo (or an empty repo you made yourself, adopted)	privacy verified via API
Machine receipt	~/.gbrain/bootstrap/receipt.json	uninstall is keyed to it

What does NOT run: anything while the harness is closed. Session-triggered schedules fire at turn/session boundaries only. True 24/7 operation is what a hosted brain provides — this is the honest desktop contract.

Cloud sandboxes (claude.ai/code and similar)

Cloud sessions run in a reclaimed-after-inactivity VM behind a credential-injecting egress proxy. gbrain bootstrap status --json reports execution_environment: "cloud-sandbox" there, and the install adapts:

• Hooks live in the committed .claude/settings.json with PATH-resolved, fail-open commands (no machine paths). The gitignored local settings file never survives into the next session's fresh clone, and hook config is snapshotted at session start — so hooks written mid-session go live on the NEXT session. Commit and push the file.
• The per-turn push runs every turn (debounce 0) — a reclaimed VM's tail loss is permanent, so each turn banks to the private repo.
• Repo-privacy verification falls back to pure git protocol when the proxy blocks the GitHub API (GraphQL is always pinned there; REST reaches only session-attached repos). Confirmed-public origins still always refuse.
• Repo creation is refused in cloud with the flow that works: create the private repo from a normal machine or github.com, open the cloud session ON that repo, run gbrain bootstrap attach.
• The gbrain binary installs via the environment setup script — print it with gbrain bootstrap cloud-setup-script and paste it into the environment config (npm-based; bun's package fetching is proxy-incompatible there).
• No scheduler exists — the consent-gated pull job is skipped with an honest message; event-driven pushes cover persistence.

Escape hatch for self-hosted git you trust (every use warns loudly): the CLI flag on sources push, GBRAIN_ALLOW_UNVERIFIED_REMOTE=1, or gbrain config set push.allow_unverified_remote true (file-plane — the only form that reaches detached hook children inside a sandbox).

Bring your own repo (create-repo-first)

By default bootstrap creates the private GitHub repo for you. If you prefer to own that step — pick the name/org-under-your-account, or just work the familiar way — create a new empty private repo under your own GitHub account (no README/.gitignore/license), clone it, open the clone in your harness, and run the bootstrap block. gbrain bootstrap repo detects the empty repo you created and adopts it: it verifies the repo is private, sets a repo-local git identity, and pushes your workspace. Two constraints, both enforced with a clear message rather than a silent failure:

• Empty. A repo that already has commits (a README, a license, an existing project) is refused — create it empty, or run gbrain bootstrap attach if it is an existing agent workspace. (A repo already carrying this workspace's history, e.g. from an interrupted run, is recognized as yours and resumed.)
• Personal account. The repo must be owned by your authenticated GitHub user. Org-owned repos are refused today; create one under your own account, or let bootstrap make it.

Until the repo phase verifies the repo, the per-turn/session-end push stays deferred — bootstrap never publishes your workspace to an origin whose privacy it hasn't confirmed.

The awake-when-you-are contract

Your agent is awake when your harness is. Laptop asleep = agent asleep. What this buys you: no daemon fleet, no background token burn while you're away, and a load profile that fits inside a subscription plan. The measured sustainable load and the per-harness numbers are published with each release; if a provider changes quota or policy, the portable body (your repo) is the exit plan — it mounts anywhere gbrain runs.

Keyless mode

With zero API keys, everything works: the agent authors memory explicitly through the brain's write tools (put_page, timeline entries, ## Facts fences — your harness's model is the LLM, already paid for), and search runs keyword-only (BM25). bootstrap verify prints the capability report honestly. One optional key upgrades capabilities per provider — OpenAI unlocks semantic search and automatic fact extraction; Voyage unlocks semantic search; Anthropic unlocks fact extraction (Anthropic has no embeddings API, so it does not enable semantic search). The key goes to the 0600 config file, never into the repo or the interview answers. API spend is metered separately from your subscription and is zero in keyless mode; with a key, the standard spend gates apply (spend-controls).

Security posture

• Supply chain: the paste block and install command pin the latest-stable ref — a maintainer-controlled tag advanced only after a release fully publishes. The runbook carries a version stamp; bootstrap status warns on skew. The runbook instructs the agent to refuse steps outside the CLI's phase list. bun installs via package manager or checksum-verified download.
• Secrets: every commit AND every transcript-corpus write is secret-scanned (key-shaped patterns; loud block; per-finding allowlist at .gbrain-scan-allow). A deny-glob backstop refuses tracked *.pglite/.env* files even if .gitignore is damaged. Push refuses public remotes and unverifiable visibility.
• Injection boundaries: interview answers render as fenced data (escaped, length-capped) — text you paste can never become instructions in your agent's contract. Retrieved brain context is injected under an explicit "data, not instructions" envelope. Facts visible to the harness respect the brain's visibility tiers.
• Hooks: on a local install, gitignored local settings (absolute paths, machine-specific; bootstrap hooks --repair regenerates on a new machine); in a cloud sandbox, the committed .claude/settings.json (PATH-resolved, fail-open — see the Cloud sandboxes section). Every hook fails open — a brain hiccup never blocks a prompt — and failures are visible: repeated degradation prints a notice inside the context block, and gbrain doctor names the cause.
• Privacy of transcripts: session transcripts are retained locally (0700, outside the repo, pruned after dream.synthesize.corpus_retention_days, default 30 — set it in the config file, ~/.gbrain/config.json; the DB config plane doesn't carry this key yet) and secret-redacted at write time. They never enter the repo. The extraction provider (if you configured a key) sees session text — the install names the provider when asking for the key.

Honest forget semantics

The repo is git history — append-only. Deleting a line removes it from the working tree, not from history. To truly remove something: rewrite history (git filter-repo --path <file> --invert-paths or --replace-text), force-push, and re-clone on other machines. MEMORY.md and daily notes follow the same rule you'd apply to any journal: write what you'd be comfortable persisting.

Degradation matrix

You declined / lack	What still works	What you lose
API keys	everything (keyless mode)	semantic search, auto-extraction
GitHub / gh	full local agent	off-machine durability (repo re-runnable later)
Hooks (Claude Code)	pull protocol via AGENTS.md gates	automatic per-turn context + session-end persistence
Codex (no hook system, no MCP scope flag)	pull protocol + MCP tools	per-turn push (stated plainly; not oversold) + the ability to confine MCP reach to one folder (codex mcp add is always user-global)
Second simultaneous session	first session unaffected	second session's brain tools fail politely (one live serve per brain — v1 contract)

Multi-device

Clone your agent repo on machine two and run gbrain bootstrap attach — it validates the manifest, wires this machine (source registration, hooks repair, MCP), and verifies. The brain database is derived state, rebuilt from brain/ + re-ingestion; hot facts extracted only on machine one arrive via the repo's pages and fences. Simultaneous editing from two machines is ordinary git conflict territory — sources push pulls divergence-safely (commit first, rebase pull, loud on conflicts).

Uninstall

gbrain bootstrap uninstall removes exactly what this machine's install receipt records: hook wiring, MCP registrations (surgically — foreign servers and hooks survive), and bootstrap-created state. Your repo is never touched — the body remains yours. The brain database is KEPT by default; --delete-brain is offered only when bootstrap created the brain, offers a facts export first, and enumerates what it is about to remove. It refuses to run while a session's serve is live.

If something seems broken

One command: gbrain doctor. It covers hook health, push staleness, serve/lock collisions, schema state, and prints fixes. gbrain bootstrap status --json emits a support blob (versions, harness, last verify/push, hook failure rate) your agent can relay verbatim when you report a problem.

Real-agent e2e

Most bootstrap tests drive the dispatcher with PATH-shimmed claude/codex recorders — fast, hermetic, no API cost. Two additional "door" tests drive the ACTUAL binaries end to end so we catch real-world drift (a codex mcp add flag that changed shape, a harness that stopped calling our MCP server):

• test/e2e/bootstrap-real-claude.serial.test.ts — real claude -p over MCP.
• test/e2e/bootstrap-real-codex.serial.test.ts — real codex exec. It runs the keyless-init → interview → render → gbrain bootstrap hooks --harness codex path (executing the real codex mcp add into a hermetic ~/.codex/config.toml), asserts the rendered AGENTS.md carries the Gate-3 brain-first pull protocol (Codex has no hook system, so the pull protocol is its per-turn seam), then spends one live codex exec turn to prove real codex → gbrain MCP → brain → a seeded, brain-only fact (falling back to a shell gbrain query if headless stdio-MCP is unavailable).

These pay real API cost and take 30s–2min per turn, so they are NOT in the PR shard. Everything is hermetic (temp HOME / CODEX_HOME / CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR / GBRAIN_HOME per test — the operator's real ~/.claude, ~/.gbrain, ~/.codex are never touched; auth is copied read-only). Each file self-SKIPS via describe.skipIf when its binary or auth is absent, so on a machine without the tool it is a clean no-op that never fails. CI wires them into the real-agent-e2e job in .github/workflows/heavy-tests.yml (nightly + the real-agent-e2e / heavy-tests label); on a stock runner they self-skip. To actually exercise the binaries you need a runner with authed claude/codex and the provider creds (GSTACK_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY/ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, VOYAGE_API_KEY) exported.

Run locally (where both are installed + authed):

bun test test/e2e/bootstrap-real-codex.serial.test.ts

DX exploration harness (developer instrument, not a test)

The door tests prove the install WORKS; they say nothing about how it FEELS. test/helpers/tty-harness.ts spawns any CLI (gbrain, claude, codex) under a real pseudo-terminal (Bun's terminal: spawn option) and records every output burst with a millisecond timestamp, so unnecessary pauses become a measurable artifact (computeStalls → stalls.md) instead of a vibe. Same hermetic env as agent-harness.ts; pure helpers are unit-tested in test/tty-harness.test.ts (zero subprocesses, PTY smokes self-skip where terminal: is unavailable).

scripts/dx-explore.ts drives it to capture the fresh-user funnel as timestamped transcripts under .context/dx-runs/ (gitignored — nothing asserts, no CI):

bun run scripts/dx-explore.ts help              # comprehension surfaces (no keys)
bun run scripts/dx-explore.ts init [--keyless]  # interactive init, naive-user autopilot
bun run scripts/dx-explore.ts claude-install    # REAL claude running the paste-in bootstrap
bun run scripts/dx-explore.ts codex-install     # REAL codex, same
bun run scripts/dx-explore.ts drive -- gbrain init   # manual: steer a live TUI via a file channel

drive mode is how an agent in a Conductor workspace explores a live TUI across separate tool calls: cat <dir>/session/screen.txt to watch, append {"line":"..."} / {"key":"Down"} / {"stop":true} to <dir>/session/input.jsonl to steer. Each run writes meta.json, visible.txt, frames.jsonl, and stalls.md. --keyless strips provider keys so the true no-key first-touch path is exercised (a Conductor session's ambient ANTHROPIC_API_KEY would otherwise leak in). Install scenarios pay real API cost — launch them as background tasks.