Norbert, the brain

A brain in a tank that thinks in inner speech, as a static web page. A question or idea enters through the only open sense, the inspiration channel. Small, narrow voices then chatter about it on internal notice boards and in private messages, write things into shared memory, argue over a draft, lose interest, and finally one voice says the answer, out loud.

No voice knows it is part of a brain. Each one only knows its own temperament and job, the boards it follows, its private messages, the memory it is allowed to see, and the names of the others it can reach. The brain metaphor exists only in the observer UI.

Live: primbs.ca/tankbrain · Source: github.com/dirkprimbs/tankbrain-web

This is the static version of Norbert, the brain (it started out as Tankbrain). There is no server: the brain runs in your browser, every voice is a model on OpenRouter, and everything the app keeps stays in your browser.

Run it

npm install
npm run build        # the site is in dist/
npm run dev          # or: develop with hot reload (http://localhost:5178)

It starts on the dirksdefault profile. No key? The page offers Sign in with OpenRouter: you sign in on openrouter.ai, approve a key for Norbert, the brain, and come back with it saved in this browser (OpenRouter's OAuth PKCE flow; no client secret, no server, and the page's own address is the callback, so it works from any host). You can also paste a key in ⚙ Settings, or just replay the five demo sessions.

dist/ is plain files with relative paths: put it on any static host (GitHub Pages, Netlify, an S3 bucket, a folder behind nginx) or serve it locally, e.g. python3 -m http.server -d dist. Open it, add your OpenRouter key in ⚙ Settings, and ask something.

The app reads no environment variables and has no backend. The only hosts it talks to are openrouter.ai (the voices, embeddings, speech) and huggingface.co (a one-time download, only if you use the offline Kokoro voice).

How it thinks

Voice	Region (UI only)	Job
Listener	Wernicke's area	restates what is really being asked (#focus)
Associator	right temporal lobe	free association (#associations)
Inventor	precuneus	vivid, concrete material: images, scenarios, analogies, twists (#sparks)
Curator	right prefrontal	keeps the useful associations and sparks, with reasons (#ideas)
Logician	left parietal	maths and logic checks (#logic)
Coordinator	left hippocampus	only writer of the notebook: tasks, decisions, questions
Recall	right hippocampus	brings up long-term memories; only writer of long-term memory
Drafter	left prefrontal	only writer of the versioned draft
Storyteller	right inferior frontal gyrus	how the answer should be told: hook, order, example, tone (#telling)
Critic	anterior cingulate	questions the draft (#critique)
Motivator	striatum	reports interest, which drives the energy level
Inhibitor	orbitofrontal	approves or sends the final draft back
Voice	Broca's area	speaks the reply on the output channel

以上为 README 的开头部分。其余内容请阅读原文。 查看完整 README ↗