Eva-brain

Eva-brain is a desktop GUI application built around Karpathy’s LLM Wiki idea, mentioned in the original Karpathy gist as an alternative to the CLI-agent workflow. Hosted at jp-lorenc1o.github.io/Eva-brain.

Key Facts

• Platform: Desktop GUI (web-based)
• License: AGPL-3.0
• URL: https://jp-lorenc1o.github.io/Eva-brain
• Note: There is a separate project electricsheephq/eva-brain which is a fork of Garry Tan’s GBrain used in the evaOS/HireEva fleet. These are different projects.

Features

Core Architecture

• Tauri v2 desktop app — graph explorer, Vite frontend, local-first
• wiki-lib — pure TypeScript frontmatter/wiki-link parsing, graph building, deterministic structural linting
• Eva Brain Standard v1 — eva.json marker, portable brain format
• Profile-aware — research, reading, course brains each with different extraction logic
• Local-first privacy — no git remote, no cloud, no accounts
• macOS only (V1 scope)

Ingest & Processing

• Worktree-isolated ingest — Codex/Claude adapters for isolated agent work
• Import brain — copy external markdown folder into managed library
• Manage brains — update profile, language, runtime, purpose

Search & Retrieval

• Graph explorer — interactive Tauri v2 + Vite graph view
• eva-mcp — read-only MCP navigation tools (search, page reads, neighbors, shortest paths)
• Multi-language search — English, Español, Português, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, 中文

Quality & Governance

• Health Check — deterministic lint + optional agent pass (contradictions, weak provenance, stale claims, coverage gaps)

MCP / Tools

• Flashcards — for course brains
• Practice exam — with answer key, configurable topics/format

Integration

• Multi-runtime support — Codex CLI, Claude Code, OpenCode (local, free)
• OpenCode local runtime — Ollama + local model, zero setup, no API key needed
• Brain profiles — research (claims/evidence), reading (chapters/threads), course (concepts/practice gaps)
• Multi-language UI — English, Español, Português, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, 中文

Data & Storage

• Markdown files — standard wiki output
• Git local history — for review/undo, no GitHub required

Context (confidence: medium)

Unlike most LLM Wiki implementations that require CLI agents (Claude Code, Codex, etc.), Eva-brain provides a traditional desktop GUI for interacting with the wiki. It was noted by Karpathy as an example of a non-CLI interface to the pattern.

Note: There is a separate project electricsheephq/eva-brain which is a fork of Garry Tan’s GBrain used in the evaOS/HireEva fleet. These are different projects.

Implications

Eva-brain represents the “GUI alternative” branch of the LLM Wiki ecosystem — proving the pattern works outside CLI/agent interfaces. It validates that the markdown wiki is truly model-agnostic and interface-agnostic.

Related

• eva-brain-desktop-app — Eva-brain — Desktop App for LLM Wiki

• llm-wiki — The pattern this implements

• nashsu-llm-wiki — Also has a desktop GUI (Tauri app)

• obsidian — The most common GUI for markdown wikis

Sources

• raw/articles/eva-brain-desktop-app.md