# Alexandria

**Your brain, in a folder.** Alexandria is a personal "second brain" — your notes, people, projects, and daily work as plain Markdown files you own, kept by an AI chief-of-staff agent with an address you choose. No cloud account, no database, no lock-in: a folder on your machine, versioned in git, readable forever.

## Install — about five minutes

1. **Its home is `~/Alexandria`** (an *Alexandria* folder in your home folder). Keep it out of **Documents** and **Desktop** — on a Mac those sync to iCloud, and iCloud corrupts a brain. If you unzipped somewhere else (Downloads is normal), don't worry: the installer moves it to `~/Alexandria` for you, before it builds anything.
2. **Have Claude Code.** That's the only requirement — install it from <https://claude.com/claude-code> if you don't have it yet.
3. **Open a terminal in the unzipped folder and start Claude Code** — wherever it landed:

   ```sh
   cd ~/Downloads/Alexandria && claude      # or wherever you unzipped it
   ```

4. **Say "install my brain."** The installer first homes your brain at `~/Alexandria` (out of iCloud's way), then configures your machine (it will help you get git and Python if they're missing), builds your brain there, and interviews you — your name, your brain's address and voice, the areas of your life it should keep on top of. Skip anything; change everything later by saying **"settings."**

No accounts, no API keys, no sign-ups. The install needs the network once, to fetch two small Python libraries.

## After that

Open this folder in Claude Code whenever you want to talk to your brain:

- *"File this"* — paste anything; it gets organized into the right notes.
- *"What's on my plate?"* — your open work, collated across every area.
- *"Good morning"* — a brief. *"Debrief"* — an end-of-day download.
- *"Read the news"* — a briefing cross-checked across many independent newsrooms.
- *"What did X text me?"* · *"Where did my time go?"* · *"Anything in my screenshots?"* — on-Mac, read-only looks at your Messages, Screen Time, and Photos screenshots.
- *"Settings"* — change your brain's address, tune its voice, add areas.
- *"Sync to GitHub"* — a private off-site backup of your notes: your brain creates the repo, connects it, and keeps it pushed. Only your files sync, never the software.

**This folder is your brain** — your notes live right here as plain Markdown, and you can browse them with [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md) by opening this folder as a vault. The software lives tucked away in the hidden **`.alexandria/`** folder; leave it alone.

## Updating

Open this folder in Claude Code and say **"update my brain"** — it fetches the newest release itself and refreshes the system files only; your notes and your personalization are never touched. (Downloaded a newer zip by hand? Say so — it uses that instead.)

*Coming from Alexandria 3.0, where your notes lived in a `Brain/` subfolder?* Move your `Brain/` folder into a freshly unzipped Alexandria folder, open Claude Code there, and say **"migrate"** — your notes move up to the folder root, history and all, and nothing is deleted.

## Requirements

macOS (Linux works too; Windows via WSL). git and Python 3.9+ — the installer walks you through getting them via Apple's command-line tools if they're missing.

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Alexandria is a Keystone Context product — <https://keystone.computer>.

© Keystone Context Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
