ob1-local-http - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: ob1-local-http description: | Capture and search thoughts against a self-hosted Open Brain over plain HTTPS, with no MCP transport involved. Use this skill in environments where Claude Code's MCP feature is disabled or the network blocks remote MCP endpoints, but the brain stack from the companion `local-brain-no-mcp` recipe is reachable on the local network. Triggers: prompts like "remember this", "save that for later", "what did I note about X", "search my brain for Y", "what thoughts touched on Z", or any explicit request to record or recall personal memory. author: dhanjit version: 0.1.0

OB1 Local HTTP

Problem

The canonical Open Brain stack assumes Claude Code can talk to a remote Supabase MCP server. In environments that disable MCP entirely -- corporate networks, air-gapped offices, restricted Claude Code builds -- that path is not available. This skill replaces it with curl calls to a LAN-resident Open Brain (see the local-brain-no-mcp recipe), keeping the same capture-and-recall behavior without any MCP protocol involvement.

When to Use

The user wants to remember, record, save, capture, or note something.
The user wants to search, recall, retrieve, find, or look up something they previously captured.
The user wants to see recent thoughts (e.g. "what have I been thinking about", "show me today's notes").

When Not to Use

The environment has a working remote Open Brain MCP connection -- prefer the canonical MCP-based capture/search tools.
The required environment variables BRAIN_URL and BRAIN_ANON_KEY are not set on the dev host -- this skill cannot function without them; ask the user to follow local-brain-no-mcp's install instructions first.

Required Environment

On each dev host that will use this skill, the user must export:

export BRAIN_URL="http://<brain-host>:8000"   # Supabase Kong gateway
export BRAIN_ANON_KEY="eyJhbGciOi..."          # written by setup.sh

If either is missing, stop and tell the user. Do not guess values.

Process

Capture

When the user says something like "remember X" or "save this thought":

curl -fsS -X POST "$BRAIN_URL/functions/v1/capture" \
  -H "apikey: $BRAIN_ANON_KEY" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BRAIN_ANON_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"content":"<the thought>","metadata":{"source":"claude-code"}}'

Optional metadata fields: source, tags (array of strings), thread_id, anything else useful. The server fingerprints content and de-duplicates -- re-capturing identical text returns the existing id.

Search

When the user wants to recall:

curl -fsS -X POST "$BRAIN_URL/functions/v1/search" \
  -H "apikey: $BRAIN_ANON_KEY" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BRAIN_ANON_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"<what to find>","match_count":10,"match_threshold":0.65}'

match_threshold defaults to 0.7. Lower it to 0.5-0.65 for broader recall; raise to 0.8+ for precision. Cap match_count at 100.

Browse recent

When the user asks "what have I been thinking about" or wants a list rather than a similarity search:

curl -fsS "$BRAIN_URL/functions/v1/list?limit=20" \
  -H "apikey: $BRAIN_ANON_KEY" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BRAIN_ANON_KEY"

Output

For captures: confirm the id and the de-dupe fingerprint to the user in one sentence. Don't paraphrase the captured content back at them.
For searches: surface the top results with similarity scores and created_at timestamps. Order by similarity descending. If no results cross the threshold, say so plainly and suggest lowering it.
For browse: a compact bullet list with truncated content (first ~120 chars) and timestamps.

Failure Modes

HTTP 502 with "unable to reach Ollama": the brain host's Ollama service is down. Tell the user to docker compose ps on the brain host.
HTTP 502 with "did you 'ollama pull...'": the embedding model isn't loaded. Tell the user to run the documented ollama pull step.
HTTP 502 with "embedding-dim mismatch": the brain's EMBED_DIM env was changed after the volume was initialized. Tell the user to read the "one-way door" section of local-brain-no-mcp's README.
HTTP 401 or 403: BRAIN_ANON_KEY is wrong or expired. Tell the user to check supabase-docker/docker/.env on the brain host.
Network timeout: the brain host is unreachable. Tell the user to ping the brain host from this dev host.

Notes

Never log or echo BRAIN_ANON_KEY -- it's a long-lived JWT.
This skill never installs or invokes any MCP server, by design.
The brain host generates embeddings itself; this dev host doesn't need Ollama or any model files.