Customize Your Brain: Workflows, AI Scripts & Organization
The Brain 15 lets you fully customize your digital workspace through interface themes, AI-powered scripts for repetitive tasks, and advanced organization using thought types and tags. Learn to clean up messy networks, automate workflows with Cerebro AI, and design a brain that matches your thinking style.
Interface Customization & Views
Multiple View Modes for Different Workflows
The Brain 15 offers four distinct viewing modes: Plex (standard network visualization), Tree (linear file-oriented layout), Card (time-based view), and Mind Map. Each suits different work styles—use Tree for note-heavy work, Card for chronological data, or Plex for relationship visualization.
Immersive Content Themes Transform the Entire UI
Beyond wallpapers, content themes change menus, dialogs, and the entire interface appearance. Options include Light, Dark, Nocturnal, and Campfire themes that affect not just notes but all UI elements, allowing you to design your workspace aesthetic.
Windowing & Layout Control
Customize window layouts by toggling full-screen, half-screen, or docked modes. The AI sidebar (Cerebro) can dock to the sidebar or float independently, letting you keep your AI tool accessible while navigating your brain.
Fully Customizable Toolbars
Main, side, and Windows toolbars are fully configurable. Add, remove, or reorder buttons (search, sync, scripts) to match your workflow. For example, move search from far right to far left if that's where your brain naturally looks.
AI-Powered Automation with Cerebro
Cerebro AI Performs Actions, Not Just Answers Questions
Unlike ChatGPT, Cerebro can create thoughts, modify data, and act on your brain's contents. You can ask it to write mission statements, generate child thoughts, reorganize networks, or create summaries—all with safety settings that let you approve changes first.
AI Scripts Automate Repetitive Workflows
Scripts are reusable AI tasks you create once and trigger via button. Example: a research director created a script that reviews R&D proposals against five benchmarks, generates a summary, and drafts a response email—all with one click instead of manual review.
Reasoning Levels Control AI Speed vs. Depth
Choose Low (fastest answer), Medium (default balance), High (thorough analysis), or Off (instant results). Experiment with the same prompt at different reasoning levels to see how depth affects output quality.
AI Permissions & Safety Controls
Set permissions per action (create thoughts, delete files, read attachments, etc.). Choose 'Ask' to approve each action, 'Allow' for automatic execution, or 'Block' to prevent specific actions. You control how much autonomy Cerebro has.
Web Search & Local AI Integration
Enable Cerebro to search the internet for current information your AI model doesn't know yet. Alternatively, connect a local AI endpoint for offline or restricted environments (military, corporate networks).
Built-In Scripts for Common Tasks
Pre-built scripts include 'Explain Like I'm Five', 'Generate Flash Cards', 'Research and Expand', and 'Connect Related Thoughts'. Duplicate and modify existing scripts to customize for your domain (e.g., real estate inspections, academic research).
Organizing & Cleaning Up Your Brain Network
Thought Types Add Categorization & Visual Clustering
Assign thought types (e.g., 'Music', 'Auto', 'Transportation') to group similar ideas visually. All thoughts with the same type cluster together in the Plex, making navigation faster and adding semantic context without restructuring your network.
Tags Provide Flexible Cross-Cutting Labels
Unlike thought types (which cluster visually), tags are flexible labels you can apply to any thought for filtering and searching. Use tags for attributes like 'urgent', 'research', or 'client-facing' that cut across your hierarchy.
Create Intervening Parent Thoughts to Reduce Clutter
If a Plex has too many siblings, create a parent thought and drag related children under it. Example: move 'Truck Parts' and 'Car Parts' under a new 'Cars' parent to reduce visual clutter and improve navigation.
AI-Assisted Brain Reorganization
Ask Cerebro to analyze child thoughts and suggest 4–5 parent categories, then have it automatically relink all 37+ thoughts into those categories. This task, which used to take hours manually, completes in minutes with AI.
Undo & Redo Protect Against Mistakes
Every AI action (and manual action) has an undo button. If Cerebro reorganizes your brain and you don't like it, click undo to revert instantly. This safety net encourages experimentation.
Mass Selection & Bulk Operations
Control-Click to Select Multiple Thoughts
Hold Ctrl and click individual thoughts to add them to a selection box. You can toggle thoughts on/off, select related thoughts by depth (e.g., all children 3 generations down), and include or exclude thought types and tags.
Copy & Paste Bulk Thoughts to New Brains
Select 99 thoughts, copy them, create a new brain, and paste. All notes, files, documents, color coding, thought types, and tags transfer intact. Instantly spin off a focused brain from a larger one.
Mass Type Assignment
Select a large group of scattered thoughts and assign them all the same thought type at once, without manually editing each one. Useful for bulk categorization or importing thoughts from another source.
Advanced Customization & Workflows
Expand View Levels Control Plex Depth Display
Use Normal (1 generation), Normal+1 (2 generations), or Expand All to see more thought levels at once. Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+0 for Normal+1, Ctrl+9 for Normal. Useful in meetings to quickly navigate deep hierarchies.
Custom Script Icons Make Buttons Instantly Recognizable
Each script can have a custom icon from 41+ pages of options. Color-code scripts by phase (Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3) or function so you instantly recognize which button to click.
Script Code is Editable & Shareable
Scripts can be written in plain English or code. Duplicate a built-in script, modify the URL or logic, and save as your own. Share scripts by copying the code into a document for colleagues to import.
Customize Content Theme Colors & Fonts
Edit immersive themes to change heading color, text color, background, and default fonts. Example: change Campfire theme's brown background to blue and adjust text to light color for better readability.
Practical Workflow Examples
Research & Development Proposal Review Workflow
A biotech director receives R&D proposals via email, pastes them into a brain note, clicks a custom script that checks against five benchmarks, and receives a summary highlighting gaps and a draft response email—automating hours of manual review.
Educational Flash Card Generation
A professor creates a note on Zion National Park, runs the 'Generate Flash Cards' script, and Cerebro creates Q&A pairs (e.g., 'Where is Zion located?'). These can be converted to child thoughts for a pop quiz.
Brain Spin-Off for Focused Projects
A travel brain contains 99 thoughts about Utah. Mass-select all Utah-related thoughts, copy them, create a new 'Utah Projects' brain, customize its theme with Bryce Canyon wallpaper and campfire colors, and continue building in isolation.
Notable quotes
My brain, my rules. I want the buttons that I like where I like them. — Matt Caton
AI is not just answering a question. It's creating notes and categories and understanding your brain. — Matt Caton
You can cherry-pick exactly what you need and always go back and edit and modify in the future. — Matt Caton
Action items
- Explore all four view modes (Plex, Tree, Card, Mind Map) in a test brain to find which suits your workflow best.
- Customize your main and side toolbars by adding frequently used scripts or commands as buttons.
- Create one custom AI script for a repetitive task in your workflow (e.g., proposal review, content summarization).
- Assign thought types to 10–20 scattered thoughts in an existing brain and observe how visual clustering improves navigation.
- Mass-select a cluttered area of your brain, ask Cerebro to suggest parent categories, and run the reorganization script.
- Duplicate a built-in script (e.g., 'Explain Like I'm Five'), modify it for your domain, and test it on sample content.
- Set up AI permissions (Ask, Allow, Block) for actions you care about (e.g., block deletion, allow note creation).
- Create a test brain and experiment with immersive content themes and custom color/font edits to design your ideal workspace.
- Copy a large, well-organized section of your brain and paste it into a new brain to spin off a focused project.