Install

Brain Server is one self-hosted binary (plus the brain CLI). It runs on a 4 GB ARM device drawing under 5 W up to a beefy server — the same binary, the same data layout.

Operator step honesty: installing the launchd service on macOS, signing freshly-copied binaries, and Docker volumes are manual steps. The authoritative runbook is docs/deployment.md and docs/docker.md; this page is the 60-second summary.

Bare metal (macOS / Linux)

# 1. Build the release binaries (server + brain CLI + mcp + bench).
cargo build --release --features bench \
  --bin brain-server --bin brain --bin mcp --bin bench

# 2. Install the launchd service + copy the CLI binaries to ~/.local/bin.
#    This also strips the macOS com.apple.provenance xattr that otherwise
#    triggers Gatekeeper SIGKILL (exit 137) on first exec.
scripts/install-service.sh

# 3. Verify.
brain doctor
brain status

• Live DB: ~/.openclaw/workspace/brain.db (override BRAIN_DB_PATH).
• Logs: ~/Library/Logs/brain-server.{log,err.log}.
• Auth: bearer token from AUTH_TOKEN_FILE (default off if none resolves).

Docker

docker build -t brain-server .
docker run -p 8765:8765 -v "$HOME/.openclaw/workspace:/data" brain-server

See docs/docker.md for the image, env surface, and volume layout.

Next

Quickstart — a 5-minute run through recall, a proposal, and an audit verify.