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Intro: Build a Company Brain Every AI Can Use

By · Published October 29, 2026

Key takeaways

What will you learn in the Company Brain series, and where do you start?

00:00 This video is the introduction to a series on building a company brain you can use with any AI tool. The idea is simple: your notes, business context, code and decisions live in plain markdown files in a folder you own, and Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT, Hermes, Grok or whatever comes next can all read the same folder. You are never locked into one AI tool.

If you are new to the channel, take the trainings in this order:

  1. 01 · Start here: the Atlas Folder training. A simple file structure for running your AI chief of staff, set up with Obsidian and Claude in about seven minutes. Read the written walkthrough or watch it on YouTube.
  2. 02 · Free bonus training: “How the Top 1% Setup AI So Well It’s Almost Unfair” with Sabrina Ramonov. Seven free Claude Skills, plus the Company Brain that makes them sound like you. Read the written version or watch it on YouTube.
  3. 03 · The full Company Brain workshop with Austin Distel. Two hours on building the brain, bringing your team in, Shared Drive permissions and the folder structure we hand out at the end. Read the full written guide or watch it on YouTube.

Want the folder now? The free Company Brain training, folder and setup prompt needs no opt-in. To pick your next article or video by topic, use the Company Brain resource hub.

What does “one company brain, any AI tool” mean?

00:28 You build one company brain so you can switch tools as often as you want and get the most out of every one.

The test is one question: if you switch the AI tool you work with tomorrow, does all of your company context, everything you have been building, transfer with you? If it does not, you have a problem.

If Obsidian isn’t the point, what is?

00:53 A lot of people found this channel through the video on connecting Claude with Obsidian (YouTube) to build a visual layer for an AI second brain. That video still works. But Obsidian isn’t the point, and the point isn’t really Claude or Codex either.

The point is that you do not want to be at the whim of one platform. If a tool ends your subscription one day, your company knowledge, your insights and your IP should not be tied up inside it.

What does model agnostic mean in plain English?

01:11 Model agnosticism is a fancy way of saying: I don’t want to be tied into one specific model. I have been operating this way across my own work, and the rest of the video is how to set things up so you can too.

Step 1: Why do you need to own your context?

01:24 Ask what happens to your notes, your business context, your code and your decisions if a tool goes away. If the answer is “they go with it,” you do not own them.

That is why a simple AI second brain with Obsidian works so well, especially for solo founders and small teams. The shared context and knowledge sit locally on your machine, in files you control. But as the next chapter makes clear, it really isn’t about Obsidian.

Why is markdown the brain and Obsidian only the window?

01:51 The graphs you can make in Obsidian look cool and can help you spot connections in your business. At the end of the day, though, Obsidian is a better, more structured way to look at your markdown files.

A markdown file is just text in a document that the AI reads and reviews, and that you can edit. Plain markdown is not pretty to look at, and it gets hard to work in when you have dozens or hundreds of files. The AI does not care. It uses those files as context to keep maintaining and growing its memory. Obsidian is a layer that sits on top so you can see into them.

If you have not set up that window yet, the Atlas Folder training and the two-minute Obsidian connection video cover it.

How do you take a company brain from one laptop to a whole team?

02:20 The problem with relying only on local files and Obsidian is that you cannot enable your team as you grow. Different departments and different people need different information about the business, and it is not accessible from your local drive.

That is where people build their company brains inside Google Drive:

  1. Install Google Drive locally on your machine.
  2. Sign in to your Google Drive account.
  3. Point Claude, Codex or Grok directly at that folder structure.

Each tool can see into it and pick up exactly where you left off. For how a team version handles who sees what, the Company Brain workshop covers Shared Drives and permissions, and the two-hour case study shows a team going from scattered context to shared knowledge.

Where does GitHub fit in a company brain?

02:56 Add GitHub so your code lives in its own repositories and you have version history as you work with collaborators. Drive holds the shared context, GitHub holds the code, and you expand what you can do with AI tools without being locked into any one of them at any point.

Step 2: How can different AI tools work from the same foundation?

03:13 I use Claude Code and ChatGPT extensively all day. With my AI chief of staff and my Atlas folder company brain tied into one, I can jump back and forth between the two as often as I want without skipping a beat. Neither tool owns the context. The folder does.

What does it look like when Claude Code hands a task off to Codex?

03:26 This chapter is a real on-screen demo: Claude Code hands a task off to Codex in the middle of the work, and Codex carries on from the same company brain.

The narration over the demo points back to the interview with Austin Distel at Agentic Society (YouTube), which gives a full breakdown of how to set up the company brain folder. All of it is free.

The foundation of your core file system is the starting point. You see more success as your context gets more refined and the brain learns with you every day. Keeping it updated is the job: scheduled tasks at the end of each day take in your Fathom, Granola or Wispr Flow conversations and update the daily brief and daily ledger, which your AI chief of staff reads and routes from.

How does one AI chief of staff route work to many agents?

04:18 You talk to one core agent. You delegate to it and give it your goals and instructions. That is your AI chief of staff, and its only job is to take in requests and route them to any number of other agents.

How many agents it routes to does not matter, as long as it can reason, understand and architect the plan to execute in line with the vision you give it. All of this comes from building a brain you own, so you are not tied to one AI tool while things keep changing.

New to the idea? Start with What Is an AI Chief of Staff, then follow How to Build an AI Chief of Staff in Claude (Full Setup) (YouTube).

What goes in an Atlas Folder: soul file, ledger, connectors?

04:53 Start locally, with markdown files in an Atlas folder structure, so you always know where your AI is looking. Two files do most of the work:

Daily briefs and saved decisions sit alongside them. The free Company Brain folder and setup prompt gives you the structure ready to use, and the Atlas Folder walkthrough shows the build step by step.

What should you do when you get stuck setting it up?

05:33 Be resourceful, and use AI to be resourceful. When you hit a roadblock, it is often a matter of articulating what you want to your AI tool and then problem solving toward a solution.

That might mean having Claude set up code for your GitHub, or set up your Atlas folder. It can do both very quickly.

Step 3: How do you make a company brain useful day to day?

06:05 Once the second brain is set up, you build the company brain on top of it: departments, divisions, agents and skills, all supporting you and the outcomes you are going after.

You speak directly to your AI chief of staff. It routes to the right agents, skills and connectors to get the job done. If you want a head start on skills, the Sabrina Ramonov bonus training installs seven free ones.

Why should you save every decision to the company brain?

06:30 When you finish a project or a problem-solving session, save the decisions to your company brain. That preserves them and keeps them available for the next session.

Start with one key task, one outcome you want to accomplish. Then set up daily briefs and recurring scheduled tasks that:

This is not only about saving time. With that context, you can simply ask your chief of staff what the revenue-generating activities are that you should focus on.

What is the difference between an AI second brain and a company brain?

07:11 An AI second brain is personal to you, the human operator behind it. It may hold private information you do not want to share with your company or anyone else. That is best kept locally on your machine.

A company brain expands out when other people in your company need to access the same context files. That is where Google Drive, Dropbox or a similar service comes in. The Company Brain workshop walks through that team setup in full.

What is the feedback loop that makes the brain improve?

07:50 Lay the foundation, then create a consistent feedback loop. Your AI starts a goal, ends the goal, learns from it, makes itself better, and implements those changes so it is better the next time.

Why is it called an Atlas Folder?

08:01 Atlas carried the weight of the world on his back. Hand the weight sitting in your head to your Atlas folder, and your AI chief of staff looks after it.

Any AI model you work with can access that information, limited to the folders you give it permission to see. It holds more of the weight, so you are free to focus on the higher-level decisions and the work that needs your human critical thinking.

Your AI second brain does not have to live in your head. It can live in a few local folders on your machine. Pair Obsidian with it for a better view, then translate it into a Google Drive folder system so your team can work with the same AI tools and company context, getting better every time you show up and sign off.

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Full video transcript

This video is an introduction video to a series of videos on building a company brain that you can use with any AI tool. And quick heads up, if you’re new to this channel and you haven’t gone through my Atlas folder training first, I’d recommend starting with that after this introduction video to get your Atlas folder set up, which is just a simple file structure system for operating your AI chief of staff inside of, and then layering on additional trainings that I do with Sabrina Ramonov and Austin Distel, which I share more about in this video.

In this video, I’ll show you how to build one company brain so you’re never locked into a single AI tool. You can switch tools as often as you want and get the most out of every one. If you switch whatever AI tool you’re working with tomorrow, does all of your company context, everything you’ve been building, transfer with you? If it doesn’t, you have a problem.

A lot of you watched my video on YouTube about connecting Claude with Obsidian to build a visual component to your AI second brain. Obsidian isn’t the point, and the point isn’t even really Claude or Codex. Last thing you want is to be at the whim of one platform to just say one day, “Hey, you’re done with your subscription,” and then all of your company knowledge, your insights, your IP are tied up in that tool.

I have been operating out of a mode of model agnosticism, which is just a fancy way of saying, “I don’t wanna be tied into one specific model.” Your notes, your business context, your code, your decisions, is that all gonna go away? That is the reason why setting up a simple AI second brain with Obsidian is a really effective way, especially for solo founders and small teams to work with shared context and knowledge that’s working locally on your machine.

But it really isn’t about Obsidian. At the end of the day, the fancy graphs that you can create with Obsidian, they look cool and they can be helpful for making some connections to different things that are going on in your business. But really, at the end of the day, it’s a way for you to have a better, more structured way to visually look at your Markdown files. And all a Markdown file is is a bunch of text in a document that the AI is reading and reviewing that you’re able to edit but regular text-based Markdown files aren’t really that pretty to look at and they can kind of be hard to just operate inside of if you have dozens or hundreds of Markdown files. But AI can use these Markdown files as context to continue maintaining and growing its memory. And Obsidian is a layer that just fits on top of that so that you can see and look into them, which is great.

The problem with only relying on local and Obsidian is that you’re not really giving yourself a position to be able to enable your team as you start to grow and have different departments and different people that need different information about your business that may not be accessible just on your local drive. That’s where people are building out their company brains inside of Google Drive. You install Google Drive locally on your machine, you sign into your Google Drive account, and then you point Claude, you point Codex, you point Grok directly at that file, that folder structure, and they can see into it and they can pick it up right exactly where you left off.

And then you add in things like GitHub so you could have different repositories for where your code is gonna live. You can have version history as you’re working with collaborators. You’re gonna expand your capabilities of being able to work with these AI tools while not being locked into any one at any given point.

I use Claude Code and ChatGPT extensively all throughout the day. Those two tools inside of my workflow with my AI chief of staff and my Atlas folder, company brain, all tied up into one, I can jump back and forth as much and as often as I please without skipping a beat.

In an interview I did with Austin Distel at Agentic Society here as well on this channel, we gave a full breakdown of how to set up this company brain folder. And again, all of this stuff is available for free to you guys right now. And so it’s important to know that the foundation of how you’re setting up this core file system is the starting point for where you’re gonna be able to see more and more success as you get more refined with your context and you build your company brain that’s learning and growing with you every single day because we’re always updating our company brains. We’re setting up scheduled tasks to make sure that at the end of the day, we’re taking in our Fathom or our Granola or our Wispr Flow conversations to update our daily brief and our daily ledger that our AI chief of staff can read and then route things to.

One core agent that you talk to, that you delegate to, that you give you your goals, your instructions, that’s your AI chief of staff. And its only job is to be able to see intake and then route to any number of other agents. Quite frankly, I don’t really care how many other agents it’s routing to to get the job done, as long as it’s able to reason and understand an architect, the plan to execute moving forward in alignment with the vision that I am providing it. And all of this stems from building a brain that you own so that you’re not tied into any one particular AI tool ’cause things are always changing.

But starting locally with markdown files, with an Atlas folder structure to know where your AI is looking every single time you talk with it, to have a soul file that it reads every single time. It has a conversation with you to know exactly how you work, how it’s supposed to operate, and then creating a ledger, just like you would have a library and understands everything that’s going on in the library. Your AI chief of staff needs to understand all the tools, all the connectors, the MCPs that you’re connected to, things that maybe you’re missing that would be helpful to get connected to, then help you with solving problems and actually getting those set up.

And that brings an important point that I wanna stress to you if you are running into roadblocks while you’re getting this thing set up, is be resourceful. Use AI to help you with being resourceful for solving problems as you’re coming up with them. Often, it’s a matter of articulating and communicating what you want with your AI tool, and then problem solving to understand how can you create a solution. And that might mean having Claude help you with setting up code for your GitHub or setting up your Atlas folder, which it can help you do very quickly.

And then we’re gonna be making it useful. So as you get this second brain set up, as you build on top of it your company brain with different departments, different divisions, different agents and skills that are all leading to support you and the outcomes that you’re gonna be going with, you’re speaking directly to your AI chief of staff who is then routing to the different agents and the different skills and the different connectors to helping you with getting the job done.

And so when you finish a project or you come through a problem solving session and save the decisions that were made to your company brain, you’re preserving those decisions and you’re keeping those changes and those decisions that you’ve made ready and available for your learning in the next session. And all you need to do is start with one key task, one key outcome that you wanna be accomplishing here and just setting up daily briefs and recurring scheduled tasks that will do things like check your calendar, check your outstanding, people that you wanna be following up with on your client list or customer list or the different things that are gonna be moving the needle forward in your business. Not just from a time-saving perspective, but what are the revenue generating activities that you can be focusing on simply asking your chief of staff what these are when it has access to this context.

The simplest way that I can put it is an AI second brain is something that is personal to you as the person, as the human operator behind it. They might have information that’s purely private that you don’t wanna be sharing with your entire company or anyone else for that matter. And those are best served fit locally on your machine. Now the company brain starts to expand out when you have other people in your company and organization that are gonna need to be accessing the similar context files. And that’s where a Google Drive or a Dropbox or a number of other services.

And at the end of the day, as you’re going through this process, laying the foundation, creating a consistent feedback loop where your AI starts a goal, ends a goal, learns from the goal, makes itself better, and then implements those changes to make it better for the next time is gonna create this feedback loop.

Atlas was carrying the weight of the world on its back. And if you can just hand that weight that’s sitting inside of your head to your Atlas folder, AI chief of staff looks at it. Any AI model that you’re working with is gonna be able to access this information with the select folders that you give it permission to access and helping you with getting that stuff out of your head, holding them with more of that weight so you can free yourself up to be focusing on the higher level decisions and the tasks that need your human critical thinking.

And that is why your AI second brain doesn’t have to live inside of your head. It can live inside of just a few local folders on your machine. You can pair Obsidian with it to give you a better view into what’s going on in that brain. And then you can translate that into a Google Drive folder system that you can enable other members of your team to also work with these different AI tools and your company context to get better every single time you show up and sign off.

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