Capture

capture — the single ingestion entrypoint

When the user wants to save a thought, an article snippet, a transcript fragment, or any text into their brain, run gbrain capture. Don't reach for gbrain put or commit-then-sync — capture is the front door and it handles both local and thin-client installs the same way.

Contract

• Input: the content to save (inline arg, --file PATH, or --stdin).
• Output: a page in the brain DB AND a markdown file on disk under <sync.repo_path>/<slug>.md. Receipt printed to stdout.
• Side effect: the page becomes immediately queryable via gbrain query, gbrain search, or any MCP-bound agent.
• Idempotency: same content → same inbox/YYYY-MM-DD-<hash8> slug. The daemon's 24h content-hash dedup catches re-captures.
• Trust: all captures via this skill are local-CLI trust (remote: false). Untrusted webhook ingestion goes through POST /ingest, not this verb.

When to invoke

• "Capture this thought" / "save this" / "drop this into my brain" / "remember this"
• The user pastes content and asks to keep it
• After a meeting summary, a research note, or any synthesis that should land as a brain page

What it does

gbrain capture resolves to a put_page call (local) or a remote MCP call (thin-client). Either way the page lands in the DB AND on disk in one move via the v0.38 write-through plumbing. The default slug is inbox/YYYY-MM-DD-<hash8> so captures cluster in a predictable triage location.

How to use

gbrain capture "the thought I want to remember"
gbrain capture --file ./notes/today.md
echo "from a pipe" | gbrain capture --stdin
gbrain capture "..." --slug daily/2026-05-21
gbrain capture "..." --type idea --source voice-whisper
gbrain capture "..." --quiet          # script-friendly: prints just the slug
gbrain capture "..." --json           # structured output for agents

Defaults

• Slug: inbox/YYYY-MM-DD-<hash8> (stable for same content; the daemon's 24h dedup catches re-captures).
• Type: note (override with --type idea etc.).
• Frontmatter stamps: captured_via: capture-cli, captured_at: <ISO>.
• Title: first non-empty line of the body, capped at 80 chars (truncation appends …).

Output Format

Default prints a 5-line receipt:

captured:
  slug:          inbox/2026-05-21-abcdef12
  status:        created_or_updated
  content_hash:  f3a7b9c0d1e2f3a4…
  file:          /Users/you/brain/inbox/2026-05-21-abcdef12.md
  captured_at:   2026-05-21T04:15:00.000Z

--quiet prints only the slug (use for SLUG=$(gbrain capture "..." --quiet)). --json prints structured output for downstream tools.

Anti-Patterns

• Don't reach for gbrain put. That's the old per-page primitive that doesn't know about default slug generation, content-type heuristics, or the receipt block. capture is the human-facing wrapper.
• Don't try to bulk-import dozens of files by looping over gbrain capture. That's what gbrain sync (or gbrain import) is for. Capture is for single thoughts, single notes, single transcripts.
• Don't pre-format the content yourself with frontmatter if you don't need to. Capture wraps plain prose in sensible frontmatter (type + title + captured_via + captured_at). The body becomes # Title\n\n<your prose>. Pass --file PATH if you already have a fully-formatted markdown file.
• Don't pass secrets as inline content. Inline args land in shell history. Use --file or --stdin instead.

When NOT to use this skill

• Bulk ingestion of many files → skills/media-ingest/SKILL.md or gbrain sync instead
• Article/link with author + publication metadata → skills/idea-ingest/SKILL.md (it knows to build the people page)
• Meeting transcripts → skills/meeting-ingestion/SKILL.md (attendee enrichment)

This skill is for the simple "I have a thought, save it" case. Specialized ingestion paths handle their own slugging + cross-referencing.

Source: garrytan/gbrain → skills/capture/SKILL.md