Ingestion and Connectors

For Slack-specific rollout steps (channel allow-lists, pilot runs, scope checklist), read brain-runbook instead — this skill covers the provider-agnostic source lifecycle.

Source Providers

create-source accepts exactly manual, generic, clips, slack, granola, or github (sourceProviderSchema in actions/_schemas.ts), and rejects anything else. There is no arbitrary/custom provider string — a generic webhook-fed source uses provider: "generic" with a sourceKey + minted ingestToken, not a made-up provider id.

pnpm --filter brain action create-source \
  --title "Support call transcripts" \
  --provider generic \
  --sourceKey support-calls \
  --visibility org

create-source returns ingestToken in the response once — it is stored only as a SHA-256 hash (ingestTokenHash) on the source row, so it cannot be retrieved again later. Surface it to the user immediately (e.g. for wiring into an external system's webhook config) rather than assuming you can read it back with get-source.

Manual sources are push/import-driven and private by default. Use import-markdown-files for a bounded folder or batch of .md / .markdown files; it preserves relative paths for deduplication, stores searchable text as document captures, and reports each file's import or privacy outcome. Use the standard sharing actions to change a source to organization visibility or grant specific access. Do not use sync-source for a manual source.

Blessed FAQ And Docs Publishers

Approved FAQs, docs, handbooks, and similar owned resources use the same generic signed source contract. They are not a new provider and do not require Brain to crawl the entire upstream system. The source owner publishes only the records Brain is allowed to use:

pnpm --filter brain action create-source \
  --title "Blessed Agent-Native docs" \
  --provider generic \
  --sourceKey agent-native-docs \
  --policy '{"trustTier":"blessed","answerEligible":true,"authority":100,"freshnessWindowDays":null,"reviewRequired":false,"conflictBehavior":"prefer-higher-authority"}' \
  --visibility org

The source answer policy is code-enforced:

Field	Effect
trustTier	blessed, standard, or untrusted; cited answers rank higher trust first.
answerEligible	Excludes the source from ask-brain answers when false.
authority	Ranks otherwise eligible sources from 0 to 100.
freshnessWindowDays	Excludes source-backed results after the configured window; null disables expiry.
reviewRequired	Raw captures cannot support answers, and company knowledge enters review.
conflictBehavior	Prefer higher authority, surface conflicts, or require review before raw support.

Legacy sources remain standard, answer-eligible, authority 50, with no freshness expiry. Use update-source --policy ... to tighten an existing source without recreating it.

Source Health States

get-brain-health (readBrainHealth in server/lib/brain-health.ts) is the single action to check before telling a user "your source is broken" or "nothing has synced yet." Each source gets one deterministic health value:

Health	Meaning
error	Source status === "error", has lastError, or its latest sync run failed.
paused	Source status is paused or archived.
needs_setup	Slack source with no configured channel allow-list yet (channelIds/channels/allowedChannels all empty).
needs_sync	Auto-sync-eligible provider (slack/granola/github) that has never completed a sync (lastSyncedAt is null).
stale	Past its computed nextSyncAt by more than a 15-minute grace window.
healthy	None of the above.

get-brain-health also reports distillationQueue counts (pending, failed, stale — a processing row untouched for 15+ minutes counts as stale), proposals.pending, sources.attention (every non-healthy source), and ordered setup.nextSteps. Read this before diagnosing a "why isn't X in Brain yet" question — it is cheaper and more reliable than inspecting individual sources by hand.

Running a Sync

• sync-source --sourceId=<id> runs one source's connector immediately (requires editor access on that source). Slack scans only its allow-listed channels; Granola polls accessible notes; GitHub imports approved repository issues/PRs.
• sync-due-sources sweeps every accessible source whose nextSyncAt has passed. Prefer this for "catch everything up" requests instead of listing sources and calling sync-source in a loop.
• Auto-sync only applies to slack, granola, and github sources, and only when the source's own config doesn't explicitly set autoSync: false (sourceAutoSync in brain-health.ts). manual, generic, and clips sources are push/import-driven, not polled — there's no nextSyncAt to wait on for those.

Beyond the Source Actions

Source sync actions are convenience readers, not integration limits. For ad hoc provider analysis, or a question that needs an endpoint, filter, or payload the source actions do not model, call provider-api-catalog / provider-api-docs first, then provider-api-request against the provider's real HTTP API. Use connectionId for a specific shared grant and accountId for a specific OAuth account.

Credential Resolution Order

For connector work, use existing workspace integration grants when available; do not duplicate provider tokens into Brain. Every provider-backed source resolves its credential in this order (never skip ahead or ask for a duplicate token if an earlier tier already has one):

1. Granted workspace_connections / workspace_connection_grants for appId=brain — a shared credential another app or Dispatch already connected and granted to Brain.
2. Backward-compatible Brain-local SQL credentials (legacy, pre-workspace-grant sources).
3. Registered vault secrets scoped to the same user/org/workspace.

Brain source credentials do not fall back to raw deploy-level environment variables — .env/.env.local alone will not satisfy a source's credential check. list-connection-providers reports per-provider readiness (connected, granted, needs_grant, not_connected) plus credential health, so check that before telling a user to paste a new token — if a provider shows needs_grant, the fix is granting Brain access to the existing connection, not creating a new one.

Editing And Removing Sources

• update-source edits title, config, cursor, status, or answer policy on an existing source.
• delete-source is a hard delete — there's no soft-archive alternative exposed as an action; setting status: "paused" via update-source is the reversible way to stop a source without losing its captures.
• list-sources --provider=<p> --includeArchived=<bool> is scoped by accessFilter — sharing/visibility rules apply the same way they do for knowledge and proposals.

Related Skills

• brain — distillation, retrieval, and publish-tier mechanics once a capture exists.
• brain-runbook — Slack rollout steps, distillation worker internals, scheduled sync cron wiring, demo/eval seeding, and the generic ingest webhook payload shape.
• sharing — the accessFilter/assertAccess pattern used throughout source and capture reads.