Noggin

Noggin is a local-first brain for humans, teams, and AI agents. It ingests surface activity from Slack, agent sessions, GitHub, and direct CLI input; sends the content to Noggin Workers, an LLM brain agent; stores provenance in SQLite; and exposes the brain through CLI, MCP, Hermes, OpenClaw, a Slack slash command, and a small dashboard.

The product goal is simple: every useful mistake, decision, process detail, and workflow lesson should become reusable context instead of disappearing at the end of a chat.

V1 Surface Map

Slack / GitHub / Agent / CLI
          │
          ▼
  source event envelope
          │
          ▼
 validate -> redact -> dedupe -> Noggin Workers
          │                    │
          ▼                    ▼
 append-only event log   observations + entities + edges
          │                    │
          │                    └────────► Markdown graph nodes
          └────────► local SQLite brain ◄──────── skill proposals
                                │
                                ▼
             CLI + MCP + Hermes + OpenClaw + dashboard

Install

Guided setup:

git clone <this-repo>
cd noggin
./setup.sh

The setup script creates .venv, installs noggin, writes a private ~/.noggin/noggin.env, asks for your LLM provider/API key, and walks through optional Slack, GitHub, sync, Hermes, and OpenClaw configuration.

Manual setup:

git clone <this-repo>
cd noggin
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
noggin doctor

Noggin is LLM-only. Running the CLI, servers, and adapters requires an API key for the configured provider:

export NOGGIN_PROVIDER=openai
export NOGGIN_API_KEY=...
export NOGGIN_MODEL=gpt-4o-mini
noggin doctor

Supported providers:

Provider	API key env	Notes
openai	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_OPENAI_API_KEY	OpenAI chat completions
anthropic	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Anthropic Messages API
gemini	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_GEMINI_API_KEY	Gemini generateContent
openrouter	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_OPENROUTER_API_KEY	OpenAI-compatible
groq	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_GROQ_API_KEY	OpenAI-compatible
together	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_TOGETHER_API_KEY	OpenAI-compatible
mistral	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_MISTRAL_API_KEY	OpenAI-compatible
ollama	NOGGIN_API_KEY or NOGGIN_OLLAMA_API_KEY	OpenAI-compatible local server
custom	NOGGIN_API_KEY	Set NOGGIN_BASE_URL

Optional settings: NOGGIN_BASE_URL, NOGGIN_MODEL, NOGGIN_LLM_TIMEOUT, NOGGIN_TEMPERATURE, and NOGGIN_GRAPH_DIR.

Quick Start

export NOGGIN_PROVIDER=openai
export NOGGIN_API_KEY=...
noggin ingest "Decision: we keep the first version local-first and use MCP as the host-neutral adapter."
noggin ingest --source agent --kind mistake "Mistake: auto-editing skills silently breaks trust. Always create a proposal first."
noggin recall "local-first adapter"
noggin graph sync
noggin skills propose --content "Mistake: deployment failed because migrations were not listed in the release checklist."
noggin dashboard --open

Knowledge Arrangement

Noggin Workers arrange knowledge as source-backed triples:

source event -> observation -> subject --predicate--> object

The LLM chooses durable observations, subjects, predicates, objects, confidence, and tags. Noggin stores the event log, observations, entities, and edges in SQLite, then materializes each entity as a Markdown node file under ~/.noggin/graph/nodes/ by default. Node files include observations, outgoing links, incoming backlinks, and event provenance.

Graph commands:

noggin graph sync
noggin graph list
noggin graph show "noggin"

Adapters

Local Install For Hermes

scripts/install-hermes.sh
hermes plugins enable noggin

Local Install For OpenClaw

scripts/install-openclaw.sh

MCP

noggin mcp

Expose this command as a stdio MCP server. It supports:

• brain_ingest
• brain_recall
• brain_reflect
• brain_skill_propose
• brain_graph_sync
• brain_graph_list
• brain_graph_show

Slack

export NOGGIN_SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET=...
noggin slack serve --port 8787

Configure a Slack slash command to POST to /slack/command.

Supported slash command text:

• remember <text>
• recall <query>
• propose-skill <mistake or workflow lesson>
• status

GitHub

noggin github issue owner/repo 123
noggin github pr owner/repo 456

Set GITHUB_TOKEN for private repositories or higher rate limits.

Hermes and OpenClaw

Install the generated skill files from integrations/hermes/SKILL.md or integrations/openclaw/SKILL.md. Hermes can also load the plugin in integrations/hermes/noggin_plugin/.

Skill Proposal Safety

Noggin Workers can draft skill changes, but the brain never silently edits skills by default. It creates a proposal with provenance and an explicit target path. Applying a proposal requires an allowed root and writes an audit event. If --run-tests is provided, the proposal is rolled back when tests fail.

Storage

Default database path:

~/.noggin/brain.db

Override with:

export NOGGIN_DB=/path/to/brain.db
export NOGGIN_GRAPH_DIR=/path/to/graph

Development

python -m pytest
ruff check .