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Full Guide - Build Your Own AI Second Brain with Claude Code — Transcript

by Cole Medin · 5,302 words · 741 segments · language it · Watch on YouTube

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  1. 0:00I've been building my second brain with
  2. 0:01Claude code for the last 3 months and
  3. 0:04it's gotten to the point where it saves
  4. 0:05me at least a dozen hours of work and I
  5. 0:08promise you I'm not exaggerating for the
  6. 0:11sake of this video. So right now, I want
  7. 0:13to show you all of the components of my
  8. 0:16second brain, talk about the skills and
  9. 0:17the use cases, the things that I'm
  10. 0:19automating. I've been running a very
  11. 0:22similar business for the last year and a
  12. 0:24half and so I know how long it takes for
  13. 0:26me to do a lot of these things that I've
  14. 0:28started to automate with the help of my
  15. 0:30second brain and there is a stark
  16. 0:32contrast for a lot of parts of the
  17. 0:34business with how long it took back then
  18. 0:37and how long it takes now. So I don't
  19. 0:39use my second brain to work less, but it
  20. 0:43takes things off my plate so I can move
  21. 0:44my business forward faster, focusing
  22. 0:47more on the high-leverage tasks. That's
  23. 0:49the main goal of building a second brain
  24. 0:51is to release some of your capacity so
  25. 0:54you can dedicate it to things that
  26. 0:56matter more. So I'm here in my Slack,
  27. 0:58which is one of the places where to my
  28. 1:00second brain just like I would a friend
  29. 1:02or co-worker. So a lot of examples here
  30. 1:04are things I do with my second brain. I
  31. 1:06have it help me ideate for my content,
  32. 1:09creating YouTube scripts based on my
  33. 1:11tone of voice and my content calendar,
  34. 1:13managing my inbox, helping me research
  35. 1:16and keep up with all the craziness in
  36. 1:17the AI industry right now, but also
  37. 1:19specific to my interests. It even helps
  38. 1:22me with image generation and diagram
  39. 1:23generation, like creating thumbnails,
  40. 1:25managing my habits to keep me on track
  41. 1:28every single day with the things I want
  42. 1:29to accomplish. I use my second brain to
  43. 1:31help me ideate, research and keep my
  44. 1:34business and my entire life very
  45. 1:36organized. And my second brain, which I
  46. 1:39built on top of Claude code and
  47. 1:40Obsidian, has been the biggest deal for
  48. 1:43my business since I started using Claude
  49. 1:46code itself. And the best part about
  50. 1:48this entire architecture, which I'll
  51. 1:49cover with you, is that everything
  52. 1:51compounds on itself. As you use your
  53. 1:53second brain more and more, it becomes
  54. 1:55more in tune with you, anticipating your
  55. 1:58needs. It builds up examples of how you
  56. 2:00communicate and work that it references
  57. 2:02later. The entire application evolves
  58. 2:04over time and you build this entire
  59. 2:06knowledge base. That's why I integrate
  60. 2:07with Obsidian because it's where I store
  61. 2:09all of my knowledge and have my agent
  62. 2:11evolve it over time. Every single
  63. 2:13document that you see here in my
  64. 2:15Obsidian graph is a part of my second
  65. 2:17brain. It builds up an index over time
  66. 2:19of all of my emails, all of my
  67. 2:21announcements and YouTube scripts. It
  68. 2:24literally is a brain that is expanding
  69. 2:27over time as I use it. All right, so
  70. 2:29here's what we're going to go through
  71. 2:30today. First, I'm going to address the
  72. 2:32elephant in the room. Why build your own
  73. 2:34AI second brain in the first place when
  74. 2:36we have things like Openclaw out there?
  75. 2:38Then we'll get into the architecture.
  76. 2:39I'll show you exactly what goes into
  77. 2:41each one of the components here, how we
  78. 2:43build in skills and use cases for our
  79. 2:45second brain, how we make it evolve
  80. 2:47itself over time. And then once you
  81. 2:49understand the core architecture of the
  82. 2:51second brain, then we're going to get
  83. 2:53into something special that I have for
  84. 2:55you here. This is a GitHub repo that
  85. 2:56I'll link to in the description. We're
  86. 2:58going to go through this Claude code
  87. 3:00skill that will walk you through
  88. 3:01creating your PRD for your second brain.
  89. 3:04So I'm not giving away all the code for
  90. 3:05my second brain, but the point is for
  91. 3:07you to build your own in the first place
  92. 3:08and this is how you start. And so at the
  93. 3:11end of the video, I'll go through this
  94. 3:13live with you, creating that document
  95. 3:15that outlines the full scope of work to
  96. 3:17create your second brain in phases to
  97. 3:19break it down nice and simple for you.
  98. 3:21All right, so I'm going to dive right
  99. 3:23into answering the big question here.
  100. 3:24Why do we care about building our own
  101. 3:26second brain when we can just run
  102. 3:27Openclaw? And so to start, I need to
  103. 3:30explain to you the lethal trifecta. And
  104. 3:33this is actually really important to
  105. 3:34understand just for agents in general.
  106. 3:36So the idea behind the lethal trifecta
  107. 3:38is we have a huge uptick in concern for
  108. 3:42our AI agent if all three of the
  109. 3:44criteria are met because this means that
  110. 3:46our agent is going to be very
  111. 3:47susceptible to security risks like
  112. 3:50prompt injection. You've probably heard
  113. 3:52about that a lot if you've set up
  114. 3:54Openclaw and done research on it
  115. 3:55yourself. And so we have private data
  116. 3:58access, untrusted content and an
  117. 4:00exfiltration vector. Let me explain each
  118. 4:02of the three of these really quick.
  119. 4:03They're super important. So first of
  120. 4:05all, we have private data access. If
  121. 4:07your agent has access to something like
  122. 4:09an email or calendar, that is step
  123. 4:11number one for the trifecta and for our
  124. 4:14second brains, this always applies.
  125. 4:16Otherwise, it wouldn't really be that
  126. 4:17helpful to us. And then the second
  127. 4:20pillar here is untrusted content. If
  128. 4:22there's any kind of input that can come
  129. 4:24into our AI agent that isn't from us,
  130. 4:27things like incoming emails or even web
  131. 4:29page content, all of those could
  132. 4:31theoretically contain malicious
  133. 4:33instructions for a prompt injection
  134. 4:35attack. And then last but not least, we
  135. 4:38have the exfiltration vector. It doesn't
  136. 4:40really matter if your agent can access
  137. 4:42private info and receive incoming
  138. 4:44information if there's no way to send
  139. 4:47your sensitive data out to the malicious
  140. 4:49attacker, your agent is going to be a
  141. 4:51lot harder to compromise.
  142. 4:54However, for our second brains, yeah,
  143. 4:56it's always going to have the ability to
  144. 4:57send a message or post to an API
  145. 4:59endpoint. We're giving so much power to
  146. 5:02our tools, especially something like
  147. 5:03Openclaw like I'll talk about in a
  148. 5:05second here.
  149. 5:06And so the argument with the lethal
  150. 5:07trifecta is really all three of these
  151. 5:10need to be in place. Like if there's a
  152. 5:11way to send sensitive information to a
  153. 5:15malicious user
  154. 5:17and then access our private information.
  155. 5:19But there isn't really a way to receive
  156. 5:21a prompt injection attack. Like we can't
  157. 5:23receive any other inputs, then there's
  158. 5:26not really a risk here. Like if only
  159. 5:27these two things apply, there's a lot
  160. 5:29less of a security concern. Or if there
  161. 5:32is untrusted content coming in and we do
  162. 5:34have an exfiltration vector, but there's
  163. 5:36no private information for the agent to
  164. 5:37access, then again, the risk for our
  165. 5:40agent goes down significantly. But like
  166. 5:43I already said, all three of these are
  167. 5:44always going to apply to our second
  168. 5:46brains. They have all three by default.
  169. 5:48It's really hard to make a useful second
  170. 5:51brain without being exposed to the
  171. 5:53lethal trifecta.
  172. 5:55Okay, so cool. What's the point you're
  173. 5:56trying to make here? Well, hear me out
  174. 5:58on this. If we are really forced to be
  175. 6:00exposed to the lethal trifecta with our
  176. 6:03second brain cuz that's the only way
  177. 6:04that it's useful, then what it means is
  178. 6:06we have to be very careful about our
  179. 6:08implementation cuz we want to limit each
  180. 6:10one of these pillars as much as
  181. 6:12possible. And honestly, Openclaw and
  182. 6:15other solutions that are already out
  183. 6:17there, they don't do a very good job
  184. 6:20limiting especially the private data
  185. 6:22access and the exfiltration vectors.
  186. 6:24They've been doing like Openclaw's been
  187. 6:25doing a lot of work recently on handling
  188. 6:27prompt injection attacks and I have to
  189. 6:29hand it to them. Some of the security
  190. 6:31risks and other things that were a big
  191. 6:33deal at first have been addressed. And
  192. 6:35so Openclaw is something that is
  193. 6:37constantly evolving, but there still are
  194. 6:39a lot of security issues and the main
  195. 6:41problem, even outside of the, you know,
  196. 6:44issues in the code base itself, is that
  197. 6:46it is a massive code base that you don't
  198. 6:48understand. You're running something
  199. 6:50that it's hard for you to adjust
  200. 6:52yourself. It's hard for you to
  201. 6:54understand. You're giving so much
  202. 6:55control to an AI agent and you don't
  203. 6:57really know in what ways you're actually
  204. 6:59giving control. Like you don't have
  205. 7:01understanding of how the lethal trifecta
  206. 7:04is really affecting you. And so when you
  207. 7:06build your own, you actually get to
  208. 7:08control what you build. You define the
  209. 7:10permissions up front. You create the
  210. 7:12foundation so you get to layer on the
  211. 7:14capabilities as you evolve your second
  212. 7:16brain versus just running something that
  213. 7:18works and does way too much out of the
  214. 7:20box right away. And yes, it does mean
  215. 7:23that it is more work for us to create
  216. 7:25our own second brain and not just use
  217. 7:26something out of the box. But in the
  218. 7:28end, you're going to create something
  219. 7:29that is customized to exactly what you
  220. 7:32need and it's going to be a lot simpler,
  221. 7:34following the classic advice we've
  222. 7:36always had for building AI agents. You
  223. 7:38just want to work with simple composable
  224. 7:41patterns. And yeah, for a lot of the
  225. 7:43second brain that I'll show you here,
  226. 7:44it's just Claude code with skills that
  227. 7:46drives most of the capability here. It's
  228. 7:48a beautiful thing. And then for a lot of
  229. 7:51the rest of the architecture that I'll
  230. 7:52cover with you in just a second here,
  231. 7:54the beautiful thing here is we're not
  232. 7:56just building it from scratch. As much
  233. 7:59as I just dissed Openclaw for being a
  234. 8:02security risk, it is a beautifully
  235. 8:05crafted application. Like don't get me
  236. 8:07wrong, Openclaw is very impressive and
  237. 8:09there's a reason that it really took the
  238. 8:11internet by storm. And so we're not
  239. 8:13going to ignore it, but we're also not
  240. 8:14going to run it directly. Instead, what
  241. 8:17we're going to do is take inspiration
  242. 8:19from Openclaw. So literally as I built
  243. 8:21my second brain on top of Claude code, I
  244. 8:24pointed it to the Openclaw GitHub
  245. 8:26repository cuz it's fully open source
  246. 8:28and I said, "Look here and see how they
  247. 8:30implement the memory layer with the
  248. 8:31soul.md and the user.md. I want you to
  249. 8:34see how they implement the heartbeat for
  250. 8:36the proactive part of the agent." And it
  251. 8:38took a lot of inspiration from that code
  252. 8:40base and brought the things that I liked
  253. 8:42about it into my own version, but I
  254. 8:44still get to maintain control and build
  255. 8:46up the exact permissions and
  256. 8:48capabilities I'm giving to my agent over
  257. 8:49time. That is the big unlock here. So we
  258. 8:52build it ourselves, but we take
  259. 8:54inspiration from what's already out
  260. 8:55there so that we can stand on the
  261. 8:57shoulder of giants. So with that, let's
  262. 8:59actually get into the architecture now.
  263. 9:00I'll show you at a high level how I
  264. 9:02built each one of these components. Now,
  265. 9:04it would take a very long time to build
  266. 9:06the entire thing from scratch with you.
  267. 9:08That's also why I have the template as a
  268. 9:10starting point. But if you do want to
  269. 9:12see me build this entire second brain
  270. 9:15from scratch, I'm running a special
  271. 9:174-hour workshop in the Dynamis community
  272. 9:19this Friday, April 3rd at 11:00 a.m.
  273. 9:22Central Time where I will take this
  274. 9:24starter template that I'm showing you
  275. 9:25right now and show you what it looks
  276. 9:27like to build everything live, taking
  277. 9:29inspiration from solutions like
  278. 9:31Openclaw. So by the end of it, you'll
  279. 9:32have your own working second brain with
  280. 9:34everything I'm about to cover with you.
  281. 9:36So check that out if you are interested.
  282. 9:38Otherwise, let's go ahead and get right
  283. 9:39into the architecture here. So the first
  284. 9:42big thing that I took inspiration from
  285. 9:44with Openclaw is the memory layer. So if
  286. 9:47you've seen Openclaw before, you'll
  287. 9:49recognize some of these files like the
  288. 9:51soul.md, the user.md, the memory.md.
  289. 9:55That architecture is genius and it's so
  290. 9:57simple. As part of the power of our
  291. 9:59second brain is that we're managing
  292. 10:01things with just markdown documents,
  293. 10:03which is also why Obsidian is such a
  294. 10:05powerful tool to use alongside Claude
  295. 10:08Code for your second brain. So, I talk
  296. 10:10to my brain with Claude Code, but then
  297. 10:13Obsidian is my canvas to view things
  298. 10:15like the diagrams that it generates for
  299. 10:17me like we're looking at right here, all
  300. 10:19of my different documents, so I can like
  301. 10:21load up the user.md like we're looking
  302. 10:23at right here. So, as it evolves this
  303. 10:25over time, I can watch this and even,
  304. 10:27you know, correct some things that I
  305. 10:28need to. And so, within my memory folder
  306. 10:32that I have right here in my Obsidian
  307. 10:33vault, I have everything that we're
  308. 10:35going to get into here. Actually, quite
  309. 10:37a few things. I manage my entire life
  310. 10:39with my second brain now. So, we have
  311. 10:41the user.md that I just showed you, the
  312. 10:43memory.md, so keeping track of all my
  313. 10:45key decisions that I'm making every
  314. 10:47single day. Like these are some of the
  315. 10:48key decisions that I made as I was first
  316. 10:50building my custom second brain. And
  317. 10:53then we have the soul.md, so this is the
  318. 10:55personality that I give to my second
  319. 10:57brain. And again, just taking this
  320. 10:58directly from Open Claw cuz I love this
  321. 11:01approach. There's no security issues
  322. 11:03with this part of Open Claw, so I'm just
  323. 11:05leaning right into it.
  324. 11:07And all of these core files that we have
  325. 11:09in our memory layer inspired by Open
  326. 11:11Claw, we're bringing them right into the
  327. 11:14context of our Claude Code up front
  328. 11:16through a session start hook. So, we
  329. 11:18automatically load the soul, user, and
  330. 11:20memory.mds into the context of our
  331. 11:23Claude Code. And hooks are actually a
  332. 11:25pretty important part of our Claude Code
  333. 11:27second brain beyond this as well because
  334. 11:29we also have a pre-compact hook. So,
  335. 11:31whenever our conversation is getting
  336. 11:33really, really long, we have to do a
  337. 11:34memory compaction or move on to another
  338. 11:36conversation, we need to make sure that
  339. 11:38we save this conversation to our daily
  340. 11:41log because we want our second brain to
  341. 11:44learn from every single conversation.
  342. 11:47So, we build up this quite long daily
  343. 11:50log every single day. And then we have
  344. 11:52this daily reflection process. So, this
  345. 11:54happens through just a cron job. I run
  346. 11:56this once a day. This uses the Claude
  347. 11:58Agent SDK under the hood, and it just
  348. 12:00goes through this promotion process cuz
  349. 12:02we have this super long raw daily log
  350. 12:05from all of our conversations. We have
  351. 12:06to figure out what do we care about
  352. 12:09remembering all of the time, right? Like
  353. 12:11what should we promote to the memory.md
  354. 12:13file that is always loaded into the
  355. 12:15context of our Claude Code. So, it
  356. 12:17extracts things like key decisions,
  357. 12:19lessons learned, important facts. This
  358. 12:21is one of the most important parts that
  359. 12:23of our system that allows our agent to
  360. 12:26evolve over time.
  361. 12:28And then we do the same thing whenever
  362. 12:29we end a conversation as well. I mean,
  363. 12:31especially cuz we aren't always
  364. 12:32compacting, right? Whenever we end a
  365. 12:34Claude Code session, we have the hook
  366. 12:36here that does the same thing. So, daily
  367. 12:38log is where we dump everything, and
  368. 12:40then we do our promotion process to, you
  369. 12:42know, this core file. This is probably
  370. 12:45the most important file for the entire
  371. 12:47second brain. And then another important
  372. 12:49thing here is the memory.md because it
  373. 12:51is a more concise version of our daily
  374. 12:53logs, it doesn't always have all the
  375. 12:55information we'd want to search back
  376. 12:57through. And so, we also do allow our
  377. 12:59agent to perform rag. So, we index all
  378. 13:03of our daily logs into a SQLite
  379. 13:05database, and you could do Postgres as
  380. 13:07well, doesn't really matter, but we
  381. 13:08index it there so our agent can search
  382. 13:10through all of the daily logs. If we
  383. 13:12want to find something really specific
  384. 13:14that might not have been quite important
  385. 13:16enough to make its way into the
  386. 13:17memory.md, but we still might want to
  387. 13:19reference that in a later conversation.
  388. 13:22So, when our agent performs rag, it has
  389. 13:24access to all of the documents that you
  390. 13:26see here in the Obsidian graph view,
  391. 13:29everything in our daily logs folder. I
  392. 13:31mean, take a look at this. I have a file
  393. 13:33for every single day since I've been
  394. 13:36running my second brain. Okay, so I
  395. 13:38started with the memory layer because it
  396. 13:40really is the core part of our second
  397. 13:42brain. But we also need to give arms to
  398. 13:44our second brain. They need to be able
  399. 13:46to do things on our behalf, and that is
  400. 13:49where skills come in. And Claude Code
  401. 13:52plus skills is all we need for our
  402. 13:54capabilities. Again, going back to our
  403. 13:56other diagram here, we want to focus on
  404. 13:58simple composable patterns. That's how
  405. 14:00you want to build agents all of the
  406. 14:02time, and that's all we need. We don't
  407. 14:04need other applications running to our
  408. 14:05second brain. We don't even need MCP
  409. 14:07servers. I literally use my skills for
  410. 14:09everything. And so, I'll show you inside
  411. 14:12the belly of the beast right here. This
  412. 14:13is my repo for my own second brain. It's
  413. 14:16pretty messy cuz this is where I do my
  414. 14:17work every single day. But if we look in
  415. 14:19the .claude/skills directory, take a
  416. 14:21look at this. There are so many skills
  417. 14:23that I'm using. I'm using all of these
  418. 14:24at least on a weekly basis. I've covered
  419. 14:27a lot of them on my channel before like
  420. 14:29the Excalidraw diagram skill. Link to
  421. 14:31the video for that right here. I love
  422. 14:34using this all of the time to generate
  423. 14:36diagrams like the one that you're
  424. 14:37looking at right here. And the thing is,
  425. 14:39for the Excalidraw diagram skill, all of
  426. 14:41the skills that I have for generating
  427. 14:43PowerPoints and helping me create
  428. 14:45YouTube scripts, like all of these, the
  429. 14:46memory layer is powering them, right?
  430. 14:49Like the skill is going to create a very
  431. 14:51generic diagram or a very generic
  432. 14:53YouTube script unless it is able to
  433. 14:55access the memory here, understanding
  434. 14:57how I've scripted similar videos in the
  435. 14:59past or just like going back to my
  436. 15:01memory.md or my user.md. So, the skills
  437. 15:05are made very specific to me through,
  438. 15:07you know, some of the prompting in the
  439. 15:08skill itself, but especially because
  440. 15:10every single conversation, the memory is
  441. 15:12powering all the capabilities that I
  442. 15:14leverage through my skills. And then one
  443. 15:16of the core skills that I have for my
  444. 15:18second brain is one that explains all of
  445. 15:21my direct integrations and exactly how
  446. 15:23to use the APIs that I've set up for to
  447. 15:26work with my services like Gmail, Asana,
  448. 15:29Circle where I have my Dynamis AI
  449. 15:31community, Slack. Wherever I am doing
  450. 15:33work, my second brain has access to it
  451. 15:36as well. And I have a skill that
  452. 15:37explains all the capabilities that it
  453. 15:39has right here. Now, the important thing
  454. 15:41that makes this different than what you
  455. 15:44would have with Open Claw by default is
  456. 15:46I'm very careful through my Python API
  457. 15:49layer the different capabilities that I
  458. 15:51give it access to through these
  459. 15:53different APIs. And so, it can only read
  460. 15:56my Slack. It can't actually post
  461. 15:58messages. It can't create things in
  462. 16:00Google Docs. It can't manage my
  463. 16:02calendar, but it can tell me events that
  464. 16:03I have. But sometimes where necessary, I
  465. 16:06do give it right access. Like it can
  466. 16:08create Gmail drafts, it just can't send
  467. 16:11emails. I can have it manage Asana
  468. 16:12tasks, but only in certain projects. And
  469. 16:14so, because this is my own second brain,
  470. 16:16I have full control. I can [snorts] be
  471. 16:18very, very nitpicky about the
  472. 16:20permissions that I'm actually giving it,
  473. 16:22and I can evolve it over time if I want,
  474. 16:24but I'm starting with sort of like a
  475. 16:25zero-trust mindset. Like let's start
  476. 16:27with just read-only, and then add in
  477. 16:29capabilities and be very controlled
  478. 16:31about that. And for all of my direct
  479. 16:33integrations, I've implemented them with
  480. 16:35a very common pattern. And what that
  481. 16:37means is I can have my second brain
  482. 16:39evolve itself creating new integrations
  483. 16:42by just one-shotting them with Claude
  484. 16:43Code. It is so easy because it can
  485. 16:45reference existing integrations and its
  486. 16:48memory of how it's built things in the
  487. 16:49past to basically do the whole planning
  488. 16:52part of the AI coding workflow itself.
  489. 16:55And that's also how I built my chat
  490. 16:57interface. So, Slack is created in a way
  491. 17:00where I could just copy this for any
  492. 17:01other platform I want to integrate like
  493. 17:03Telegram or Discord. And so, being able
  494. 17:06to have your second brain reference
  495. 17:07itself as well as other solutions like
  496. 17:10Open Claw just means that it's very It's
  497. 17:13just incredibly easy to build on top of
  498. 17:16your second brain. All right, so the
  499. 17:18last thing that I want to cover with my
  500. 17:19second brain before I get into the
  501. 17:21template for you is the heartbeat. And
  502. 17:23this really brings everything together
  503. 17:25because it's where we build the
  504. 17:26proactive nature of our second brain. It
  505. 17:28can start to anticipate our needs and do
  506. 17:31things on our behalf that we want it to
  507. 17:33without us having to even ask it. And
  508. 17:36so, we have all of these direct
  509. 17:37integrations with these services like
  510. 17:40Gmail and my my task management, but I
  511. 17:43don't always want to be the one to
  512. 17:44prompt it to do things for me. Like what
  513. 17:46if I wanted to automatically draft
  514. 17:48replies to a bunch of my emails? That's
  515. 17:51where the heartbeat comes in. So, it's
  516. 17:53going to gather information through all
  517. 17:56of the APIs with the direct
  518. 17:57integrations. So, we have this
  519. 17:59deterministic part before we even go
  520. 18:00into Claude Code where we're gathering a
  521. 18:03context around my life that's happening
  522. 18:05right now. And then we send all of that
  523. 18:07pertinent information into Claude Code.
  524. 18:09So, we're using the Agent SDK because
  525. 18:11we're invoking Claude Code
  526. 18:12programmatically. I'm not prompting it
  527. 18:14myself. So, I have a preconfigured
  528. 18:16prompt where it's that plus all of the
  529. 18:18information from the APIs that's sent
  530. 18:21into Claude Code so it can reason about
  531. 18:22like, "Okay, let me draft these replies.
  532. 18:24Let me handle this pull request in
  533. 18:26GitHub. Like what do I need to help code
  534. 18:27with right now?" It thinks about all
  535. 18:29that. It acts on that. And then it sends
  536. 18:31a notification to me in Slack to keep me
  537. 18:33in the loop for everything that I got
  538. 18:35going on in my life and the ways that
  539. 18:36it's helping me proactively. And so, I
  540. 18:38do have to blur a lot of this here
  541. 18:39because it's pretty sensitive
  542. 18:40information, but just showing you an
  543. 18:42example of what it looks like for my
  544. 18:43second brain to be sending me these
  545. 18:45alerts. And then if I want to, I can
  546. 18:46always reply to one of these in a thread
  547. 18:48in Slack to continue the conversation
  548. 18:51for something that it did for me. So,
  549. 18:52this is just a starting point, but it is
  550. 18:55a beautiful starting point. The
  551. 18:56heartbeat is the thing that saves me the
  552. 18:57most time out of everything in the
  553. 18:59second brain.
  554. 19:01All right, so now that you know how my
  555. 19:03second brain works, I want to help you
  556. 19:05build it. Now, like I said at the start
  557. 19:08of the video, I'm not just going to give
  558. 19:10my entire code base away cuz it also
  559. 19:12defeats the purpose of you building your
  560. 19:14own. Otherwise, I'm just going to be
  561. 19:15building another Open Claw. I want you
  562. 19:18to create the foundation for yourself,
  563. 19:20but still give you a starting point. And
  564. 19:22I thought long and hard about how to do
  565. 19:24that. How do I help you scope out the
  566. 19:26work without giving you a template and
  567. 19:28just another Open Claw? And so, what
  568. 19:30I've come up with here is a system. So,
  569. 19:32I have this requirements document that
  570. 19:34you can fill out, and then you can feed
  571. 19:36this in as context to your coding agent
  572. 19:38to create the PRD. This is your initial
  573. 19:42scope of work. It'll have all the phases
  574. 19:44to build everything in the second brain
  575. 19:46that I've gone over with you. And
  576. 19:48everything that you're looking at right
  577. 19:49here is in the GitHub repo that I'll
  578. 19:50link to in the description. So, you just
  579. 19:52clone the repository, find this my
  580. 19:54second brain requirements markdown
  581. 19:56document, and then you can edit
  582. 19:58everything here. So, you fill in all the
  583. 19:59blanks to describe exactly what you want
  584. 20:01your second brain to help you with, the
  585. 20:03level of permission and proactivity that
  586. 20:05you want. And then once you have this
  587. 20:07filled out, then you open your Claude
  588. 20:09code or code extra open coder whatever,
  589. 20:11and you run this skill, the create
  590. 20:13second brain PRD. You just have to give
  591. 20:16the path to your filled in requirements.
  592. 20:17So, right click, copy relative path,
  593. 20:19paste it in, and then boom, that is all
  594. 20:21you have to do. And I'll show you a live
  595. 20:22example of this in just a second here.
  596. 20:24But this will produce a requirements
  597. 20:26document that has all of the phases to
  598. 20:29build out everything that I've covered
  599. 20:31with you with my second brain. And so
  600. 20:33you're using what I built as a starting
  601. 20:34point, but because it's a PRD and not a
  602. 20:36code base, it's very easy to edit
  603. 20:39everything. tweak it to your heart's
  604. 20:40content to really customize it to you
  605. 20:42before you actually write a single line
  606. 20:44of code. And to make this even easier
  607. 20:46for you, I have an example of the
  608. 20:48requirements that's already filled out
  609. 20:50that you can use as a reference if you'd
  610. 20:52like. And this is what I'm going to show
  611. 20:53you right now. So, I just made up a
  612. 20:55random person here. You just share some
  613. 20:56information about you so it knows your
  614. 20:58name and your time zone and things like
  615. 20:59that. You check off the platforms that
  616. 21:02you want your second brain to integrate
  617. 21:03with. So, wherever you do your work, you
  618. 21:05want your second brain to live as well.
  619. 21:07And then listing out all the tasks that
  620. 21:09you want it to do. I even have examples
  621. 21:11for every part of the template for you
  622. 21:13to work off of. And then add in whatever
  623. 21:15you want. The proactivity level is also
  624. 21:17very important. So, it's whatever you're
  625. 21:19comfortable with. Do you want your agent
  626. 21:20to be an observer so that it's really
  627. 21:22just read only actions on everything? Or
  628. 21:25maybe you want to go so far as it's a
  629. 21:26partner. It can act autonomously even
  630. 21:28sending emails on your behalf. You can
  631. 21:30pick your level. Generally what I do is
  632. 21:33the advisor. That's what my second brain
  633. 21:34is. And then for security boundaries,
  634. 21:36like what do you want your agent to
  635. 21:37never do? We want to have a big emphasis
  636. 21:40on security for our planning and our
  637. 21:42implementation. Memory categories, what
  638. 21:45types of knowledge we want it to track
  639. 21:46and maintain and search through over
  640. 21:48time. The infrastructure, so where do we
  641. 21:50want to deploy this? Like maybe you want
  642. 21:52your second brain only ever running on
  643. 21:53your computer. Other times you might
  644. 21:55want it running remotely so it's
  645. 21:56accessible 24/7. So, hosted in some kind
  646. 21:59of droplet like in Digital Ocean or
  647. 22:01Hostinger, and then you can access it
  648. 22:02from Slack remotely. I have that set up
  649. 22:04as well.
  650. 22:06And then just uh laying out your
  651. 22:07priorities for integrations cuz that'll
  652. 22:09determine exactly how it creates the
  653. 22:11phases in the PRD. So, you fill in
  654. 22:14everything just like I've done here. And
  655. 22:16then I'll actually do this right now.
  656. 22:17I'll do {slash} create second brain PRD.
  657. 22:19I'll pass the path to this example here.
  658. 22:22And it's going to take a while cuz it's
  659. 22:24going to do a lot of research. It's
  660. 22:25going to take into account all the
  661. 22:27customizations that you want to specify.
  662. 22:29This is also where you could point it to
  663. 22:31a repository like open claw and say, "I
  664. 22:33want to take inspiration for how open
  665. 22:35claw did this or how Nemo claw did
  666. 22:37this." So, there's a lot of resources
  667. 22:39out there already that you can feed in
  668. 22:42to your coding agent. That's the beauty
  669. 22:43of using a coding agent here is you can
  670. 22:45customize things as much as you want.
  671. 22:46So, I'll come back once I have the PRD
  672. 22:49created. I'll show you what that looks
  673. 22:50like, too.
  674. 22:51And there we go. Our PRD is created. So,
  675. 22:54it outputs to the dot agents plans
  676. 22:56folder by default. Doesn't really matter
  677. 22:57where this is, but the important thing
  678. 22:59is that each of the phases that we have
  679. 23:01laid out in this PRD maps to everything
  680. 23:05that I've shown you in this diagram. And
  681. 23:06it's put in an order where we can build
  682. 23:08them one at a time. So, you can start by
  683. 23:10creating the memory foundation and
  684. 23:12you'll already have at least a part of a
  685. 23:14second brain that's pretty useful. And
  686. 23:16then you'll build in the hooks for
  687. 23:18context persistence and loading them
  688. 23:19into your sessions. You'll go on to
  689. 23:21building the memory search and then
  690. 23:23start getting into your integrations and
  691. 23:24the skills and adding in capabilities.
  692. 23:26You build it over time. We don't want to
  693. 23:28have our coding agent try to build your
  694. 23:29entire second brain in one shot. That is
  695. 23:31not going to work and it's going to be
  696. 23:33really hard to stay in the driver's seat
  697. 23:35of exactly what you're building in. So,
  698. 23:38that's why we do it in phases. And so,
  699. 23:40literally what you can do at this point,
  700. 23:41once you have your PRD, is you can go
  701. 23:44into a brand new Claude code session.
  702. 23:46You can point it to the PRD. Like I'll
  703. 23:48just copy this path, paste it in here,
  704. 23:50and say, "Let's build phase one." Right?
  705. 23:53Or if you have already built the first
  706. 23:54few phases, you can say, "Let's build
  707. 23:55phase four." And then you can kick off a
  708. 23:57planning session, figure out exactly
  709. 23:59what you want to build, if you want to
  710. 24:00tweak anything from the PRD. You go in,
  711. 24:03you create the code, you test it, and
  712. 24:04you can create your entire second brain
  713. 24:06this way in just a couple of days. It
  714. 24:09doesn't take long to get to the point
  715. 24:11where you have something as powerful as
  716. 24:13open claw, but it's entirely your own
  717. 24:15and it's a lot simpler to maintain and
  718. 24:18more secure. And so I would encourage
  719. 24:20you to try it out. I have the template
  720. 24:21and this diagram both in the GitHub repo
  721. 24:23linked in the description. Even if you
  722. 24:25already have a second brain, go through
  723. 24:27this process to get some inspiration to
  724. 24:29evolve what you already have. And
  725. 24:31remember, come and join Dynamis to be a
  726. 24:33part of the four-hour second brain
  727. 24:35workshop happening this Friday, April
  728. 24:383rd. I'm going to be building the entire
  729. 24:40thing from scratch, walking through it
  730. 24:42all in a lot more detail. So, I hope to
  731. 24:44see you there. And I hope that this
  732. 24:45video was a good starting point for you,
  733. 24:47even just showing you what goes into a
  734. 24:49powerful second brain that can save you
  735. 24:50hours and hours every single week. And
  736. 24:53so, if you appreciated this video and
  737. 24:54you're looking forward to more things on
  738. 24:56building agents and second brains, I
  739. 24:57would really appreciate a like and a
  740. 24:59subscribe. And with that, I will see you
  741. 25:01in the next video.

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