brainiac-install

Thin bootstrap for the Brainiac brain CLI engine. One command on any machine with Node.js >=18:

npx brainiac-install

What it does

1. Detects an existing brain on PATH. If found, it skips reinstalling and points you at brain update instead.

2. Installs the engine from PyPI (brainiac-cli[mcp]), trying in order: uv tool install -> pipx install -> python3 -m pip install --user (Windows: py -3 / python). First one available on PATH wins. If none of uv/pipx/Python >=3.9 are found, it prints the two official install commands (the uv standalone installer, and python.org) and exits — it never installs anything on your behalf beyond the brainiac-cli package itself.

   On a machine with Node but no Python, use the shell installer instead. This package deliberately stops rather than fetching a toolchain for you, so it cannot help there. install.sh / install.ps1 (see the repo README) do fetch uv — a self-contained binary needing no Python — and let uv download its own CPython. This package is for machines that already have a Python toolchain and would rather type one npx command than curl a script.

3. Verifies the install (brain --version) and prints a PATH hint if the new shim directory isn't on PATH in the current shell yet.

4. Initializes a vault — prompts for a workspace directory (or accept one via --vault <path>) and runs brain init --full --apply against <path>/vault, so the bootstrap ends at a searchable vault, not just an installed CLI. Decline (or run non-interactively without --vault) and it prints the exact command to run yourself later.

5. Optionally wires one client with --client <name> (one of claude-code, claude-desktop, codex, gemini), delegating to brain connect --client <name>. Without the flag it just lists the available clients.

Add --dry-run to print the full command plan without executing anything — no installs, no network access, no filesystem writes.

What it never does

• No telemetry. This script makes zero network calls itself; every network access happens inside the tools it invokes (uv, pipx, pip), which you can inspect independently.
• No shell strings. Every subprocess is spawned from an explicit argv array (spawnSync(..., { shell: false })) against a binary this script resolved to an absolute path itself. The one narrow exception: on Windows, a resolved binary that turns out to be a .cmd/.bat/.ps1 shim can't be exec'd without a shell, so that one call is shell-routed with fully static, hardcoded arguments — never user input, never a piped remote script.
• No runtime dependencies. Pure Node.js stdlib (node:child_process, node:fs, node:os, node:path, node:readline).
• The engine is Python, distributed on PyPI — this package is a thin wrapper that shells out to uv/pipx/pip to install it. It is not a reimplementation of brain in JavaScript, and it does not vendor or bundle the engine.
• Not for Node-free machines. If Node.js itself isn't available, this package can't run — use the uvx-based install path documented in the main repo's docs/install/ instead.

Flags

--dry-run           print the command plan; execute nothing
--vault <path>       workspace directory; vault created at <path>/vault
--no-vault           skip the vault-init step
--client <name>       claude-code | claude-desktop | codex | gemini
-h, --help           show help

License

Apache-2.0