<div align="center"> <img src="docs/assets/logo.svg" width="64" height="64" alt="The Brains logo">

The Brains

The smartest brains on earth, in an MCP.

Founders, CEOs and investors, each turned into a searchable MCP server built from their talks, essays and posts.<br> Add one to Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT or Codex. Every answer cites its source.

brains.ceo · Request a brain · How it works · Run your own

<img src="docs/assets/home.png" alt="The Brains directory" width="900"> </div>

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Use a brain in 30 seconds

Every brain is a public MCP URL: https://mcp.brains.ceo/<slug>/mcp. To get every brain behind one connector, use https://mcp.brains.ceo/mcp (tools: list_brains, search_brains, list_sources).

# Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http levels-brain https://mcp.brains.ceo/pieter-levels/mcp
# then run /mcp and choose Authenticate

# Codex
codex mcp add levels-brain --url https://mcp.brains.ceo/pieter-levels/mcp
codex mcp login levels-brain

In Cursor, Claude.ai / Claude Desktop and ChatGPT, add it as a custom MCP server or connector with the same URL. Each brain page on brains.ceo has one-click buttons and step-by-step instructions for each client.

The first time you connect, your client opens a short sign-in: enter your email and the 6-digit code we send you. It's free, and there are no passwords.

Then just ask: "How would Levels price this?" or "What would Paul Graham say about my idea?"

Tools

| Tool | What it does | |---|---| | search_brain(query, limit) | Searches the brain and returns passages, each with its source link and date | | list_sources() | Lists every talk, interview, essay and post collection in the brain |

The brains

| Brain | Who | Long-form | Posts | Transcript hours | |---|---|---|---|---| | Nevo David | Solo founder of Postiz, the agentic social media scheduler. His own brain, linked straight to mcp.nevo.md | 101 | 458 | n/a | | Paul Graham | Y Combinator cofounder and essayist on startup ideas, growth and founders | 45 | 370 | 11 | | Naval Ravikant | AngelList co-founder and angel investor; author of the How to Get Rich thread | 29 | 266 | 36 | | Pieter Levels | Solo founder of Photo AI, Nomad List and Remote OK, bootstrapped with $0 funding | 34 | 259 | 17 | | Alex Hormozi | Co-founder of Acquisition.com; built Gym Launch by licensing his gym playbook | 28 | 248 | 34 | | Marc Lou | Solo founder of TrustMRR, DataFast and ShipFast; $3M from 36 startups | 44 | 216 | 14 | | Sam Altman | CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator | 45 | 119 | 19 | | Jack Friks | Solo founder of Post Bridge; grows apps with organic short-form video | 20 | 142 | 11 | | Alexandr Wang | Chief AI Officer at Meta, founder of Scale AI and Meta Superintelligence Labs | 27 | 96 | 23 | | Rob Walling | Runs MicroConf and TinySeed; built Drip, bought and sold HitTail | 40 | 74 | 11 | | Elon Musk | CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; co-founder of PayPal, Neuralink and The Boring Co. | 21 | 67 | 37 | | Rob Hallam | Co-founder of SuperX, building in public on X from $0 to $80K/month | 20 | 101 | 8 | | Jason Calacanis | Angel investor backing 100 startups a year; host of TWiST and All-In | 29 | 88 | 34 | | Yahia Bakour | Solo YC founder of Context.dev; sold Stock Alarm for $500K | 7 | 157 | 2 | | Ryan Hoover | Founder of Product Hunt and investor at Weekend Fund | 48 | 147 | 20 | | Romàn Czerny | Co-founder and CMO of Gojiberry AI (YC); sold his first SaaS for 7 figures | 16 | 181 | 8 | | Blake Anderson | Co-founder of Cal AI, Umax and RizzGPT; now building 10x | 21 | 137 | 17 | | Ruben Hassid | AI educator behind the How to AI newsletter. LinkedIn brain | 37 | 265 LinkedIn | 12 | | Justin Welsh | Built a one-person business to $10M+ with no employees or paid ads. LinkedIn brain | 30 | 239 LinkedIn | 14 | | Adam Robinson | Bootstrapped founder behind RB2B and Retention.com. LinkedIn brain | 27 | 285 LinkedIn | 21 | | Bryan Johnson | Founder of Blueprint and Kernel. Health brain: his sleep, diet, exercise, supplement and biomarker protocols | 29 | 177 | 7 | | Shaan Puri | Co-host of My First Million; sold the Milk Road newsletter | 28 | 195 | 8 | | Alex West | Solo founder of CyberLeads; wrote the 13-book "How I Made $1M From My Personal Projects" | 33 | 172 | 9 | | Corey Haines | Cofounder of Conversion Factory; includes 42 playbooks from his open-source Marketing Skills | 68 | 110 | 12 | | Lenny Rachitsky | Writer of Lenny's Newsletter, ex-Airbnb product lead. Built from his own essays and talks, not his guests | 31 | 161 | 14 | | Greg Isenberg | Host of The Startup Ideas Podcast and CEO of Late Checkout | 30 | 298 | 12 | | Guillermo Rauch | Vercel CEO and creator of Next.js, building v0 and the AI Cloud | 33 | 186 | 18 | | Zach Yadegari | Built Cal AI to $50M ARR and sold it to MyFitnessPal; now building Persona | 25 | 103 | 17 | | Andrew Huberman | Stanford neurobiologist, host of Huberman Lab. Health brain: his sleep, light, focus, exercise, nutrition and stress protocols | 39 | 300 | 38 | | Jason Cohen | Founder of two unicorns, Smart Bear and WP Engine. Includes all 202 of his A Smart Bear essays (2007 to 2026) | 221 | 300 | 20 | | Socrates | Athenian philosopher. Thinker brain built from Plato's and Xenophon's dialogues (public-domain translations) | 36 | n/a | n/a | | Iman Gadzhi | Started a social media agency at 16; now teaches agencies and personal brands | 42 | n/a | 39 | | Tibo | Sold Tweet Hunter and Taplio; now runs a bootstrapped SaaS portfolio | 30 | 250 | 12 | | Danny Postma | Founder of HeadshotPro; sold Headlime to Jasper for seven figures | 11 | 187 | 6 | | Alex (@alexxgrowth) | CMO of Content Rewards; sold clipping agency Virality for 7 figures at 16 | 7 | 126 | n/a | | Priyam Raj | Bootstrapped founder of VidAI (~$70k/mo) with two SaaS exits | 11 | 82 | 8 | | Damon Chen | Bootstrapped founder of Testimonial.to and PDF.ai, started solo after Cisco | 10 | 225 | 3 | | Warren Buffett | Berkshire Hathaway chairman. Every shareholder letter from 1977 to 2024, the partnership letters and 12 talks | 65 | n/a | 23 |

Missing someone? Request a brain. The most-requested ones get built first.

How it works

A brain is a small, curated, cited knowledge base, not an archive of everything someone ever said. Each one holds 15–45 long-form sources and a few hundred hand-picked posts, all filtered to the person's principles on growth, distribution, pricing and building a business.

discover ──▶ curate ──▶ fetch ──▶ cards ──▶ notes ──▶ index ──▶ manifest ──▶ MCP + site
 (cheap       (Claude     (only the  (one per   (sectioned,  (BM25)    (brain.json)
 metadata)    picks)      shortlist) source)    third person)

| Step | Command | Output | |---|---|---| | 1. Discover | node pipeline/discover.mjs <slug> | candidates.json: top X posts, YouTube interviews and talks, essays | | 1b. Deep X pull | node pipeline/x-deep.mjs <slug> [minFaves] [maxItems] | Business-keyword and high-engagement posts (Apify, ~$0.40 per 1,000) | | 1c. LinkedIn pull | node pipeline/linkedin.mjs <slug> [maxPosts] | Recent LinkedIn posts and profile for LinkedIn-first people (Apify, ~$2 per 1,000 posts) | | 1d. Full post text | node pipeline/x-refresh.mjs <slug> | Re-fetches the full text of long X posts already in a brain (~$0.0004 per post) | | 2. Curate | a Claude agent following docs/brain-runbook.md | shortlist.json: 12–30 long-form sources, 60–300 posts | | 3. Fetch | node pipeline/fetch.mjs <slug> | Transcripts and essay text for the shortlist only (not committed) | | 4. Cards | node pipeline/summarize.mjs <slug> | cards/: title, summary, verbatim quotes, topics, quality score | | 5. Notes | node pipeline/notes.mjs <slug> | notes/: sectioned third-person notes, the passages search returns | | 6. Index | node pipeline/build.mjs <slug> | index.json, which the MCP server loads | | 7. Manifest | node pipeline/brain.mjs <slug> | brain.json: tagline, topics, principles and sample Q&A, every line cited |

Steps 2, 4, 5 and 7 run on headless Claude Code (claude -p), so they use a Claude subscription instead of API credits. The first 10 brains cost about $3.50 in total in scraping fees.

Architecture

• server/ is one Express app (TypeScript, run with tsx) that serves:
  • the website (web/)
  • every brain as a stateless Streamable HTTP MCP endpoint at /<slug>/mcp
  • OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration, where sign-in is email plus a 6-digit code (server/oauth.ts)
  • usage tracking and a password-protected /admin with an email CSV export
• web/ is a no-build vanilla HTML/CSS/JS site: a search-first directory, brain pages with cited principles and sources, and per-client install instructions.
• pipeline/ has the scripts above. They're idempotent: re-running a step skips finished work.
• data/brains/<slug>/ holds each brain's curated, derived content: brain.json, index.json, cards/, notes/ and shortlist.json.
• External brains are ones people already run themselves, like Nevo David's mcp.nevo.md. They're listed with node pipeline/external.mjs <slug> from pipeline/external/<slug>.json, and installs go straight to their URL.

Run it yourself

git clone https://github.com/VicPitic/the-brains.git
cd the-brains
npm install
npm start            # http://localhost:8790

That's enough to browse and use all the brains locally. Without DATABASE_URL, the MCP endpoints are open and nothing is tracked. Add one locally:

claude mcp add --transport http levels-brain http://localhost:8790/pieter-levels/mcp

To build new brains or turn on sign-in and tracking, copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in what you need. Deployment is a single service plus Postgres. We run the website on Railway and the same service on Manufact for the MCP host (mcp.brains.ceo), with BEHIND_MCP_GATEWAY=true and CLIENT_IP_HEADER=cf-connecting-ip.

Content and takedowns