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Disambiguation — Which "Open Brain"?

"Open Brain" is a surprisingly popular project name in 2026. If you landed here expecting something else, this page points you at the right place.

This repository is:

  • Name: Open Brain (sometimes open-brain as the repo slug)
  • Maintainer: David Sheppard (GitHub: shep-engineering publicly, degailen on the source side)
  • URL: https://github.com/shep-engineering/open-brain
  • Website: https://shep-engineering.github.io/open-brain/
  • What it does: Personal AI memory server — Postgres + pgvector + local Ollama + Model Context Protocol (MCP) so every AI tool you use (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, ChatGPT Desktop, VS Code Copilot) shares the same persistent memory of you.
  • License: MIT

If that's what you were looking for — welcome. Everything else on this page is about telling us apart from similarly-named projects we are NOT affiliated with.

Other projects named "Open Brain" or variants (AI-memory space)

These all sit in roughly the same problem space as us (persistent memory for AI tools), making confusion especially likely. We are not affiliated with any of them. Naming collisions in the "memory for AI" space are common because both words — "open" (as in open source) and "brain" (as in memory/cognition) — are obvious fits.

OB1 — Open Brain (Nate B. Jones)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/NateBJones-Projects/OB1
  • Launched: March 2026
  • Tagline: "The infrastructure layer for your thinking. One database, one AI gateway, one chat channel — any AI plugs in."
  • Approach: Hosted on free-tier cloud services (~$0.10-$0.30/month), Slack-capture oriented, newsletter and guide-driven ecosystem.
  • Coverage: Has been written about on SimpleNews.ai and Nate's Substack.
  • How to tell us apart: OB1 is Nate B. Jones' project; this one is David Sheppard's. Different source repo, different maintainer, different install patterns, different community. If you followed a Nate B. Jones tutorial or newsletter link, you want OB1 not this.

openBrain (impara)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/impara/openBrain
  • Tagline: "Agentic memory framework with semantic recall + relational reasoning."
  • Approach: Single Postgres instance exposed via MCP tools, relational-reasoning emphasis.
  • How to tell us apart: Different developer (impara), different architectural choices (relational-reasoning focus; we lean more on vector semantic + bi-temporal retrieval), different code base. Note the lowercase openBrain spelling.

OpenBrain (Mihai-Codes)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/Mihai-Codes/OpenBrain
  • Tagline: "Local-first MCP memory hub for AI coding tools (OpenCode-first MVP)."
  • Approach: OpenCode-first MVP; local-first like us.
  • How to tell us apart: Different developer (Mihai), different scope (OpenCode-first), different repo. Note the CamelCase OpenBrain spelling.

open-brain (rolders)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/rolders/open-brain
  • Tagline: "A persistent, portable & secure memory for all your AI tools."
  • Approach: Docker-based local deployment, Postgres with pgvector, MCP read access.
  • How to tell us apart: Same repo slug (open-brain) but different owner (rolders). Confirm the owner in the URL path — we are shep-engineering/open-brain (public) / degailen/open-brain (source).

BrainTree OS

  • GitHub: https://github.com/brain-tree-dev/brain-tree-os
  • Tagline: "Open source brain viewer and project management for AI agents. Give your AI a brain."
  • Approach: Organizational-structure metaphor (departments, personas, execution plans) rather than raw memory.
  • How to tell us apart: Different name (BrainTree vs Open Brain) but shows up under "open brain" search because of tagline phrasing. Different architectural model.

Other projects named "Open Brain" (neuroscience / non-AI-memory space)

These share the name but are in a completely different domain — clinical healthcare or brain simulation — so the confusion risk is lower. Still worth calling out.

Open Brain AI — openbrainai.com

  • URL: https://openbrainai.com
  • Domain: Clinical healthcare / speech-language pathology
  • What it does: AI-driven analysis of spoken and written language for neurological assessment. Clinical tool for speech-language pathologists and neurologists. Used for diagnosing conditions like Mild Cognitive Impairment, aphasia, and developmental language disorders.
  • Audience: Clinicians, neurologists, researchers, healthcare providers.
  • Published: Peer-reviewed journals (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, ACL Anthology).
  • How to tell us apart: Completely different domain. If you're a clinician looking for speech/language assessment tools, you want openbrainai.com, not this project. We have zero clinical or healthcare functionality.

Open Brain Institute — openbraininstitute.org

  • URL: https://www.openbraininstitute.org/
  • Domain: Simulation neuroscience (virtual brains).
  • What it does: Non-profit research organization. Successor to EPFL's Blue Brain Project. Builds and simulates digital brains at unprecedented scale for research.
  • Audience: Neuroscientists, computational biology researchers.
  • How to tell us apart: If you were looking for brain-simulation research platforms, you want OBI, not this project. We don't simulate biological brains.

OpenBrain (BrainVivoDev)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/BrainVivoDev/OpenBrain
  • Tagline: "An open-source brain model by Brainvivo."
  • Domain: Neuroscience / brain modeling.
  • How to tell us apart: Different domain (brain modeling, not AI agent memory).

Why so many "Open Brain" projects?

Both words are obvious fits for "open source memory/cognition system for AI" — and multiple people arrived at the name independently. None of the projects listed above are forks or derivatives of each other; they're parallel-evolved solutions to the same naming intuition.

If you're trying to confirm you're in the right place for THIS project, check:

  • Repo path: shep-engineering/open-brain (public) or degailen/open-brain (private source).
  • Maintainer: David Sheppard.
  • Website: https://shep-engineering.github.io/open-brain/.
  • Stack signals: Postgres + pgvector + Ollama + MCP stdio; Python; dashboard in CustomTkinter; v1 + v2 side-by-side architecture (unusual).

If any of those don't match what you expected, you're probably looking at one of the other projects above.

Questions, trademark concerns, or "hey I'm the other Open Brain"

If you maintain one of the projects above and have concerns about naming overlap, please open an issue on https://github.com/shep-engineering/open-brain/issues. We'd rather coordinate and make the distinctions obvious than cause confusion.

Last updated: 2026-04-22.