I have just discovered they have made TheBrain free for personal use with all features. I think you pay for synchronization abilities and for their AI. However, you can plug in your own API key for OpenAI, and I gather Claude is in the works.
I’ve always been interested in the brain, but it was always too expensive for me. But this is great, and you get to use all the functionality of the application. Using AI takes it to another level.
I dictate nowadays ( I use Spokenly plugged into my open AI api)
For example (i do a bit of medical education) → "Could you make a full map of all the causes of heart failure, including child and subchild as you deem relevant? Within each child, can you give me a title and and description in the note section. Can you include a URL Link for further reading. Can you link items that are related to each other? "
Another example → “Can you look at my brain section related to gardening? It’s a bit of a mess. Can you tidy up my brain in a more relevant, logical way so I can understand how best to tackle my gardening project?” …
My ideal would be some kind of brain functionality/mind map linked to my DevonThink databases, but I am enjoying playing with this for now.
TheBrain is a mind map, which can grow to massive size, or stay small. One can have multiple “brain” docs. It call notes “thoughts”. Thoughts can be linked extensively one to another.
“Jerry Michalski’s Brain” is often mentioned as an example of how far people have taken this software.
TheBrain has been around since 1998 (on Windows) – long before DEVONthink or Obsidian.
Because I’d rather do anything than what’s on today’s to do list, my finger is itching to click that download button and give this beast a test-drive …
Thanks for the correction, that is helpful. I’ll need to look into this and see how best to integrate with DT if I think TheBrain is worthwhile for my workflow. Thanks!
Well, I should be packing for a trip today … but that isn’t going to take all day … I’m sure I’ll have time after I’ve completed my full investigation …
I was a Brain user for a long time. It’s excellent for navigating ideas, but ultimately wasn’t for me.
You can have circular references. A node can have as many parents as you want. The main display (plex) shows the parent(s) of a node, the children of a node, and siblings of the current node.
Plus, you have things called jump thoughts, which are sort of like cross references.
It’s very easy to learn. The last I looked, it didn’t have good options for copying a single brain to a second system, like a laptop. That may have been cleaned up by now.
i’ve got theBrain (paid version). Very good app. The only catch is that you kind of need to make it your main workflow centre. I never found it easy to integrate into other systems and apps.
In 20 years, neither have I. At one point for a long while they had Google Calendar integration which worked very well. Then they shut it down because it was “too difficult” to keep working. Seems that every other developer has managed to keep their Google integration.
I have always wanted to use The Brain - mainly on account of my own being rather inefficient. But looking at it again now, and reflecting on how I use Obsidian, I fear it would be too grandular, and would lead me to spend hours tweeking and connecting, rather than doing The Work. At least with Obsidian I can link a large document to countless parents, siblings, and children - meaning I can find a body of work I can’t remember what I named, from different angles.
I think ExcaliBrain deserves a mention here. It is inspired by TheBrain and built to work within Obsidian with a bunch of properties.
Back when TheBrain was still a paid application, this was the closest free alternative. It didn’t have the polish but the basics were all there. And considering that TheBrain was quite an expensive app and with no good ways to integrate with other tools, it had a really high barrier to entry which they might be looking to change now.
It probably needs qualifying that there is still a paid version of the Brain. The paid version allows you to sync more than 1000 thoughts, gives you 30gb storage as opposed to 100mb and gives use access to Cerebro AI
I gave it a good try, but HOLY #$@%^! that app is buggy as hell!
Constantly failing on imports, errors and forced reloads when clicking on something, no way to bulk-anything with tags. And AI that has no idea it is supposed to know something about the app you are using it inside.
Not my experience. Yes there is some learning curve, but their youtube videos explain things well. I’ve had not issues with import. I can easily tag multiple thoughts. I don’t understand your comment about AI, but AI works well. It is very configurable and all AI activities that change your brain can be undone.
I’ve been using the app for a year and like it more and more as I use it. I am on the paid version.
Bugs are why I left The Brain, but that was long ago.
Devonthink has an underutilized feature that might help.
Any file of any kind can have an annotation file. As an old FORTH hacker, I think of those annotation files as shadow files, after the shadow screens popular in FORTH editors.
When you create an annotation file, you get a second file, Markdown or RTF, that’s tied to your file of interest. I think that’s a great place to put a map of related content using either DT’s item links or wikilinks.
Just a thought. Similar mechanisms are probably possible in other apps, too. DT makes it really easy.
It’s not UI/UX, which would be the learning curve part. It is doing the same thing multiple times and getting different results. Markdown imports, primarily. Getting them to import as thoughts instead of attachments proved impossible. I mean it worked once, then never again.
The AI seems completely disconnected from the app. It was unaware of The Brain, had no clue about it or menu items or how to do things in The Brain. Which rather defeats the purpose of having an AI option inside The Brain.
I gave it several hours of futzing around before I gave up.
