brian furgason

• buildfeb 2026 — ongoing

  brain — personal memory + identity system

  v0 backend shipped

  OB1 + Supabase + MCP stack for capture and recall across surfaces. Two-tier auth (private/worksafe). 11 MCP tools live on bfurg.com/mcp.

  • ChatGPT export + 70K YouTube history backfilled
  • telegram bot for mobile capture
  • vaporwave-helical dashboard now in flight (this project)
• buildmar — apr 2026

  helical.design — token system rebuild

  live

  Rebuilt the agency site as a fully tokenized stylesheet. WCAG ratios documented inline, dark mode via token override, no hardcoded values.

  • single-file html with inline css-vars
  • every contrast ratio verified against actual bg
  • design language now portable — see this dashboard
• learnongoing

  claude api — caching, tool use, mcp

  applied in brain

  Prompt caching as an architectural concern, not an optimization. MCP as the contract between memory and any LLM session.

  • cache hit-rate matters more than tokens-per-call
  • tool definitions are interfaces — design them like apis
  • agents-as-roles beats agents-as-prompts
• learnapr 2026

  d3 + react — buttery interactive viz

  shipping in radar + pulse

  d3-hierarchy.pack for cluster sizing, d3-zoom for pan, framer-motion for spring physics. Animate transform — never cx/cy.

  • transform-only animation = gpu-accelerated
  • pre-compute layouts, animate to cached positions
  • visx vs d3-direct is an authoring-style choice, not a perf one
• learnmar 2026

  refactoring ui — wathan + schoger

  applied throughout brain dashboard

  Hierarchy via size + weight + color (not size alone). Color as meaning, never decoration. Whitespace is structural.

  • labels lighter and smaller; values bold and large
  • depth via contrast and 1px lines, not shadows
  • icons earn their place or get cut
• buildapr 2026

  next.js 16 — cache components + app router

  stack of choice

  PPR + use cache + cacheLife as a new mental model. Server components by default; client components surgically applied.

  • tokens in globals.css, components in css modules
  • next/font for self-hosted geist + helvetica fallback
  • turbopack dev under 400ms ready

• direct13d ago

  Every research/derivation skill shares one skeleton: one-line input; fixed sour…

  spec-workflow

• direct37d ago

  Split advisory work into two runs with separate corpora: a premise run (client …

  agent-workflows

• direct37d ago

  Unused MCP servers (e.g

  agent-workflows

• direct55d ago

  Where do held-out fixtures live in a three-tier corpus (immutable base, cited d…

  tagged independence standard (author is not ratifier) · architecture over enforcement · deferral with named pain trigger

• direct55d ago

  Corpus tiering has a real ancestor in data engineering, not in agent architectu…

  corpus-architecture

• direct55d ago

  Three staleness mechanisms must stay as separate fields, not one flag: (1) grou…

  corpus-architecture

• direct55d ago

  Cited reference pack method that held up: run bibliographic verification as fin…

  research-methodology

• Track B of the brain IP gate: how much work is it actually… ↗ supports What do I actually need to do to charge for brain, given it…

  • strategy

  Scopes Track B (de-vendor) of the IP gate: ~2-4 days, small isolated footprint.

• Wanted a portable, privacy-tiered AI memory layer that surv… → evolved into Every new Claude/ChatGPT session starts as a stranger. I ke…

  • engineering
  • personal-systems

  A describes the initial design rationale and build decision (2026-04-27); B describes the same system after implementation and validation (2026-04-28), with identical architecture choices (OB1 + pgvector + MCP, two-tier privacy, schema-as-portfolio) but adds concrete metrics (70K signals, 114 thinking_records, public URL) and validates the decision retrospectively.

• What's my legacy, and how do I rank what I built vs. who I… ↗ supports What's the single operating instinct underneath my judgment…

  • personal

  Legacy through who I helped and what I stood for — values as the thing that endures — is the substance-over-surface self-model at the level of a whole life.

• What does it feel like — and what's the one-time vs. compou… ↗ supports What's the single operating instinct underneath my judgment…

  • strategy
  • personal

  The daily practice is the mechanism that builds and sharpens the self-model over time.

• What is the Health pillar of brain, and what's broken about… ≈ relates to Where does brain's first dollar come from, and what's the p…

  • strategy

  The Health pillar is one of the three life pillars in the product architecture, with brain as the nervous system aggregating it.

• What's the measurable outcome for the relationship/emotiona… ≈ relates to How should the relationship package help honestly — without…

  • strategy
  • design

  This metric (unblocking, not relationship survival) is what makes the "it can say leave, not just stay" honesty structurally safe.

• What's the actual decision rule for when to take the templa… ↗ supports What's the single operating instinct underneath my judgment…

  • design
  • personal

  The design hardness gate is one expression of the unifying substance-over-surface instinct.

• What's overhyped enough to bet against vs. quietly underrat… ↗ supports What's the single operating instinct underneath my judgment…

  • technology
  • personal

  Betting against surface tools and long on the data/backend substrate is the same instinct aimed at technology.

• For the thought-externalization / reflection tier aimed at… ≈ relates to Is there a second use case for brain's schema-based memory…

  • design
  • strategy

  These help/hurt heuristics are the safety design layer for the second use case (emotional-cognition + relationship grounding).

• What is brain's core value to an AI experience — the wedge… ↗ supports What's the single operating instinct underneath my judgment…

  • strategy
  • personal

  Grounding the AI in the user's essence so it can say no instead of a sycophantic yes is substance-over-surface as the product wedge.

• What tools already do the relationship / personal-memory th… ≈ relates to Is there a second use case for brain's schema-based memory…

  • strategy

  Market sizing and competitive landscape for the relationship/emotional-cognition second use case.

• Package the ethics stance, the instrumentation design, and… ↗ supports What's the single operating instinct underneath my judgment…

  • strategy
  • personal

  Honesty and measurable outcomes over hand-waving is substance-over-surface applied to how I sell — refusing to sell what my own taste-test would reject.

showing 12 strongest threads · 14 more edges on these records

• 60imp 5observation

  OB1 vendoring (three phases, all merged today) closed the loop on a meta-question: how do you compose a personal system on top of an open-source framework without ending up with two fighting models o…

  • open-source
  • personal system
  • recommendation
• 35imp 4observation

  Phase 1.5 enrichment is now inline — migration 0017 extends the metadata-sync trigger to handle importance, and the OpenRouter extractMetadata prompt (now in supabase/functions/_shared/openrouter.ts,…

  • metadata enrichment
  • tech debt
  • OpenRouter
• 35imp 4observation

  Telegram video capture (Phase 3) shipped as a thumbnail+audio composition rather than multi-frame sampling. The plan assumed sampling N frames + describing each, which would need ffmpeg in the Deno e…

  • media processing
  • serverless
  • integration
• 35imp 4observation

  Closed out the Notion agent sweep. Patina (mask spec agent, fabrication pipeline App 2) landed as work_pattern external_source notion-agent-spec, external_id patina-v1. SF UX Orchestrator case study…

  • Notion
  • agents
  • UX

1. 01

   capture

   OB1 + Telegram bot + ChatGPT export + YouTube history. Multi-surface, single sink.

   • OB1
   • Telegram Bot API
   • Supabase Edge Functions
2. 02

   store

   Postgres + pgvector. Typed tables (work_patterns, lessons_learned) over snapshots when the shape fits.

   • Supabase Pro
   • Postgres
   • pgvector
3. 03

   recall

   MCP tools, two-tier auth (PRIVATE / WORKSAFE). Thoughts callable from any LLM session.

   • MCP
   • brain.bfurg.com/mcp
4. 04

   render

   This dashboard. D3 + Framer Motion + Radix on Next.js 16. Tokens ported from helical.design.

   • Next.js 16
   • React 19
   • D3
   • Framer Motion
   • Radix