Brain — cited answers from your governed knowledge base

Ask your knowledge brain a question and get an answer grounded in your governed

corpus, where every claim carries a qmd:// citation. The brain does not paraphrase

from memory — it retrieves governed memories and cites them, so any answer is

verifiable after the fact.

Overview

This is the read surface of Bob's Big Brain: your files are compiled into

governed memories, governed by deterministic code, and retrieved with citations

by Tobi's qmd (OSS). The brain_search MCP tool fronts that retrieval. Your product

surround is INTKB govern + ICO compile + this plugin — not a fork of qmd.

The job here is to turn a natural-language question into a cited answer — and to refuse

to answer beyond what the citations support.

Prerequisites

• The bobs-big-brain / governed-brain plugin is installed (MCP governed-brain).
• Mode is automatic. In local mode (default) search runs in-process

against your local ~/.teamkb index — no network, no API key; a compatible qmd

binary must be available (prefer monorepo pin @tobilu/qmd via INTKB / installer).

Operators can use scripts/bbb-qmd from qmd-team-intent-kb so XDG points at the team

index, not personal ~/.cache/qmd. In team mode (TEAMKBAPIURL set) search

proxies to the team brain. Every hit is a qmd:// citation.

Instructions

Step 1: Search the governed corpus

Retrieval is Tobi's qmd (BM25 keyword via the MCP). Prefer short keyword queries

over full sentences.

1. Derive 1–4 distinctive nouns/verbs from the user question (drop what/why/how, articles,

auxiliaries, prepositions).

1. Call brain_search with those keywords and scope: "curated" (default promoted knowledge).

brain_search({ query: "SOPS age secrets", scope: "curated" })

The tool returns { source, results: [{ citation, snippet, score, collection }] }.

Each citation is a qmd://COLLECTION/FILENAME URI — the receipt for that hit.

Empty-result ladder (do not stop after one miss):

1. Keyword retry (curated): only if the first call was still a long natural-language sentence

(you skipped deriving 1–4 keywords). Re-run with 1–4 keywords only. Skip this step when the

first query was already keyword-style — do not re-call with the same tokens.

1. Scope retry (all): if curated is still empty, re-run the same keywords with

scope: "all". Do not use inbox/archived unless the user asks.

1. Only after curated+keywords and all+keywords are empty → Step 3 (honest refuse).

brain_search({ query: "shipped week", scope: "curated" })
// if empty (keywords already used):
brain_search({ query: "shipped week", scope: "all" })

Step 2: Answer ONLY from the cited results

• Synthesize a direct answer from the returned snippets.
• Attach the qmd:// citation to every claim, inline — for example:

The proxy reverse-proxies the API (qmd://kb-curated/system-map.md).

• If two hits conflict, surface both with their citations rather than silently

picking one — the governance layer tracks contradictions; do not paper over them.

• Do not add knowledge the citations do not support. Any reasoning beyond the

corpus must be labeled clearly as inference, not the brain's answer.

Step 3: Handle an empty result honestly

If results is still empty after the empty-result ladder in Step 1, say so plainly: the brain

has nothing governed on that topic. Do not fall back to general knowledge and present it as the

brain's answer. Optionally note that the topic may need to be captured (run /brain-save).

Output

1. A short, direct answer.
2. Each load-bearing claim followed by its qmd:// citation.
3. A closing Sources list of the distinct qmd:// URIs used.

Examples

Cited answer:

/brain what does my system map say about the proxy?

→ The proxy is the single ingress; it reverse-proxies each domain to its service
  and must be reloaded, not restarted, after edits (qmd://kb-curated/system-map.md).

Sources:
- qmd://kb-curated/system-map.md

Empty result (honest refusal):

/brain what is my refund policy?

→ The brain has nothing governed on a refund policy. I won't guess from general
  knowledge. If this should be in your brain, capture it with /brain-save.

Error Handling

Guardrails

• Read-only. This skill never writes to the corpus — capture and governance live in

/brain-save.

• Never invent a qmd:// URI. Cite only URIs returned by brain_search.
• Prefer fewer, well-cited claims over a broad answer that cannot be anchored.
• Do not conflate this product with IRSB / Moat / Scout (separate stack).

Resources

• Bob's Big Brain umbrella — stack map.
• bobs-big-brain-plugin — this plugin.
• qmd-team-intent-kb — govern layer + bbb-qmd.
• tobi/qmd (npm @tobilu/qmd) — retrieve engine (OSS; we pin, we do not fork).
• intentional-cognition-os — compile layer (ICO).
• The write counterpart: the /brain-save skill (governed capture).