One Python process and one PostgreSQL database. A Brain for decisions, a Heart for memory and a cognitive layer that runs every turn.
bash · npm cireason: reinstall on Node 22exit 0bash · npm testreason: check the fixexit 0“To explain the mind, we have to show how minds are built from mindless stuff.” Marvin Minsky
Nous builds its mind from small parts with plain jobs. Each idea from the 1986 book maps to a piece of code you can read.
Read the mapping in the READMEInterfaces reach the cognitive layer. It works with the Brain and the Heart, which share one connection pool. Background organs start turns of their own.
Interfaces (REST, MCP server, Telegram, dashboard, companion app) call the cognitive layer. The cognitive layer reads and writes the Brain (decisions, calibration, guardrails, graph) and the Heart (episodes, facts, procedures, censors, working memory). Background organs (heartbeat, schedules, subtasks, DAGs, sleep) start turns in the cognitive layer, and an in-process event bus carries turn events to the Heart. Brain and Heart share one PostgreSQL 17 database with pgvector, in the schemas brain, heart, nous_system and scoring.
Confidence, reasons and a deliberation trace for each decision; guardrails as CEL rules; Brier scores that hold confidence to outcomes.
Episodes, facts, procedures, censors and working memory, each with its own lifecycle, linked in one knowledge graph.
It picks a frame, assembles context within a token budget and runs the hooks before and after each turn.
Nous is not a wrapper around a chat window. It is the long-lived mind behind one: one agent, one database and a growing memory of what it saw, decided and did.
Every turn runs the same steps. The frame decides what kind of situation this is; recall rebuilds the context that kind of work needs; deliberation checks guardrails and records intent before Nous acts.
After two idle hours by default, a sleep cycle consolidates, links and prunes what the turns left behind.
A limit: links in the knowledge graph keep the weight they were made with. Nothing strengthens a link by use yet.