Brainy

Three database paradigms. One API. Zero configuration.
The in-process knowledge database for TypeScript — vector search, graph traversal,
and metadata filtering unified in a single query.

Quick start · One query · Features · Scale with Cor · Docs · Support

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Open Brainy is the MIT engine — the open API, client library, types, and protocol; an openly specified canonical on-disk format; and this TypeScript reference engine, scoped as a single-node engine for stores up to roughly one million rows. @soulcraft/brainy 10.4.2 was the last release under the old package name — the name passes to the native engine, Brainy, at 11.0.0: the same API over the same open format at production scale, and it requires a license.

Built because we were tired of stitching a vector store to a graph database to a document store — and spending weeks on plumbing before writing a line of business logic. Brainy indexes every fact three ways at once and lets one call query them together:

You write	Brainy indexes it as	You query it with
data: 'Ada wrote the first program'	a 384-dim vector (local embedding — no API key)	find({ query: 'computing pioneers' })
metadata: { field: 'CS', year: 1843 }	structured fields (O(1) exact, O(log n) range)	find({ where: { year: { lessThan: 1900 } } })
relate({ from: ada, to: babbage })	a typed, directed graph edge	find({ connected: { to: babbage, depth: 2 } })

It runs inside your process — no server, no Docker, nothing to operate — and persists to plain files you can snapshot with a hard link.

New here? → What is Brainy? — plain-language overview, no jargon

Quick start

bun add @soulcraftlabs/brainy        # Bun ≥ 1.1 — recommended
npm install @soulcraftlabs/brainy    # Node.js ≥ 22

Registry: add @soulcraftlabs:registry=https://source.soulcraft.com/api/packages/soulcraftlabs/npm/ to your .npmrc (anonymous read).

import { Brainy, NounType, VerbType } from '@soulcraftlabs/brainy'

const brain = new Brainy()                       // in-memory; one line swaps to disk
await brain.init()

// Text auto-embeds locally; metadata auto-indexes
const react = await brain.add({
  data: 'React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces',
  type: NounType.Concept,
  subtype: 'library',
  metadata: { category: 'frontend', year: 2013 }
})

const next = await brain.add({
  data: 'Next.js is a React framework with server-side rendering',
  type: NounType.Concept,
  subtype: 'framework',
  metadata: { category: 'frontend', year: 2016 }
})

await brain.relate({ from: next, to: react, type: VerbType.DependsOn, subtype: 'runtime' })

One query, three engines

const results = await brain.find({
  query: 'modern frontend frameworks',           // vector — what it means
  where: { year: { greaterThan: 2015 } },        // metadata — what it is
  connected: { to: react, depth: 2 }             // graph — what it touches
})

Every clause is optional; any combination composes. Under the hood Brainy plans the query across an HNSW vector index, a roaring-bitmap field index, and an adjacency graph index — and re-validates every result against your predicate before returning it, so a corrupt index can never hand you a wrong answer.

Feature tour

The database is a value

Pin it, rewind it, fork it. Snapshot isolation without a server.

const db = brain.now()                           // pin current state — O(1)

await brain.transact([                           // atomic all-or-nothing, CAS-guarded
  { op: 'update', id: order, metadata: { status: 'paid' } },
  { op: 'relate', from: invoice, to: order, type: VerbType.References, subtype: 'billing' }
], { ifAtGeneration: db.generation })

await db.get(order)                              // still 'pending' — pinned forever
await brain.get(order)                           // 'paid' — live

const lastWeek = await brain.asOf(Date.now() - 7 * 86_400_000)   // full query surface, past state
const whatIf = await db.with([{ op: 'remove', id: order }])      // speculative — never touches disk
await brain.now().persist('/backups/today')                      // instant hard-link snapshot

Consistency model · Snapshots & time travel

Local embeddings — no API keys

Strings embed on-device with a bundled MiniLM model (WASM). Semantic search works offline, in CI, and on air-gapped machines, at zero cost per call. Hybrid keyword + semantic ranking is the default:

await brain.find({ query: 'David Smith' })                            // auto: text + semantic
await brain.find({ query: 'AI concepts', searchMode: 'semantic' })    // semantic only

A typed graph, not a bag of edges

42 entity types × 127 relationship types form a shared vocabulary for any domain — healthcare (Patient → diagnoses → Condition), finance (Account → transfers → Transaction), yours. Your own taxonomy layers on with subtype, enforced at write time:

await brain.add({ data: 'Avery Brooks', type: NounType.Person, subtype: 'employee' })

brain.counts.bySubtype(NounType.Person)          // O(1) — { employee: 12, customer: 847 }
brain.requireSubtype(NounType.Person, { values: ['employee', 'customer'], required: true })

Type system · Subtypes & facets

Graph analytics built in

await brain.graph.rank()                          // which entities matter most (centrality)
await brain.graph.communities()                   // natural clusters
await brain.graph.path(a, b)                      // how two things connect
await brain.graph.subgraph([seed], { depth: 2 })  // bounded neighborhood → { nodes, edges }
await brain.graph.export()                        // whole graph, one O(N+E) streaming pass

Write-time aggregations

SUM / COUNT / AVG / MIN / MAX with GROUP BY and time windows, maintained incrementally on every write — reads are O(1) lookups, not scans. Aggregation guide

Import anything

await brain.import('customers.csv')
await brain.import('sales.xlsx')                              // every sheet
await brain.import('research-paper.pdf')                      // tables extracted
await brain.import('https://api.example.com/data.json')

Entities auto-classify on the way in; brain.extractEntities(text) exposes the same NER ensemble directly. Import guide

A filesystem that understands content

await brain.vfs.writeFile('/docs/readme.md', 'Project documentation')
await brain.vfs.search('React components with hooks')          // semantic file search

VFS quick start

Operations-grade by default

• Single-writer, many-reader — an exclusive lock protects the data directory; Brainy.openReadOnly() and the brainy inspect CLI examine a live brain from another process, safely.
• Self-upgrading data files — a 7.x brain opens under 8.x and migrates itself behind an observable lock (getIndexStatus().migration), with an automatic pre-upgrade backup. No migration scripts.
• No silent wrong answers — cold-open guards self-heal or throw typed errors (MetadataIndexNotReadyError, GraphIndexNotReadyError); they never return [] for data that exists.

Multi-process model · Inspection guide

When you outgrow Brainy

Brainy's pure-TypeScript engines carry real workloads a long way on their own — see the measured, per-operation numbers (not marketing figures) in docs/performance-envelopes.md for what to expect, unaccelerated, on plain filesystem storage.

When a deployment needs native-scale vector/graph performance — memory-mapped indexes that don't need your dataset in RAM, billion-scale ambitions — add the native engine. The API doesn't change:

npm install @soulcraft/cor

const brain = new Brainy({ storage: { type: 'filesystem', path: './data' } })
await brain.init()   // @soulcraft/cor detected — same code, native engines underneath

Installing the package is the opt-in: if @soulcraft/cor is present, it loads and announces itself in the init log; if it's present but broken, init() throws — an installed accelerator never silently vanishes behind the JS engines. Opt out with plugins: [], or pin exactly what loads with plugins: ['@soulcraft/cor']. @soulcraft/cor (Brainy 8.x ↔ Cor 3.x, version-matched) registers Rust implementations behind every provider seam: SIMD distance kernels, memory-mapped storage, a disk-native vector index that doesn't need your dataset in RAM, durable LSM field/graph indexes that serve cold opens instantly, and native aggregation. Recall@10 measured 0.99 / 0.96 / 0.96 at 1M / 10M / 100M vectors in Cor's release gate.

Open core, commercial accelerator: Brainy is MIT and complete on its own — Cor is more headroom for when you need it, not capability held back to sell you later. Licensing and support: cor@soulcraft.com.

Performance

• Per-operation p50/p95 at 1k and 10k entities, pure-JS floor, measured and re-run every release that touches a measured path: docs/performance-envelopes.md.
• JS distance kernels: ~6× faster cosine, ~1.4× euclidean than 7.x (measured: tests/benchmarks/distance-microbench.mjs, 384-dim, median of 41).
• Whole-graph reads are single O(N + E) cursor walks — a consumer-measured 19k-edge export dropped from ~27 s of per-node calls to one scan.
• Capacity planning and architecture: docs/PERFORMANCE.md · docs/SCALING.md

Use cases

AI agent memory — persistent semantic recall with relationship tracking · Knowledge bases — auto-linking and meaning-aware navigation · Semantic search over codebases, documents, media · Enterprise data — CRM, catalogs, institutional memory · Games & simulations — worlds and characters that remember.

Documentation

Start	Core	Going deeper
Brainy explained simply	API reference	Architecture overview
Installation	Data model	Consistency model
Natural-language queries	Query operators	Multi-process model
	Find system	Scaling

Requirements

Bun ≥ 1.1 (recommended) or Node.js ≥ 22. Brainy 8.x is server-only; the 7.x line remains on npm for browser use.

Support & community

• Bugs and ideas → brainy@soulcraft.com — no account needed, you'll get a receipt.
• Security reports → security@soulcraft.com — see SECURITY.md.
• Contributing → see CONTRIBUTING.md.

MIT © Brainy Contributors.