I'm a physician who uses AI every day, and between patient care, building a business, and getting pulled in ten directions at once, I don't have time to waste. So when I sat down last week to build out some infrastructure with Claude and the conversation hit its limit mid-session, it hurt. I was in the middle of structuring the entire business. Claude had written my configuration files and had the full context of what I was trying to accomplish. New chat, same AI, completely blank. I spent the next stretch re-teaching it my business structure, my goals, my constraints, and even after all that the output was flatter. The nuance was gone. That was half my week.
A few weeks ago I came across an open-source project called Open Brain. It's a context container that sits between you and whatever AI tools you use, so Claude, ChatGPT, and Codex all share the same memory. Switch tools or hit a context limit, and nothing is lost. I set it up over a weekend and the difference was immediate. I sat down for my next session and didn't re-explain a single thing. The AI already knew my brand, my audience, and my constraints because Open Brain told it.
This Isn't Just My Problem
McKinsey's 2025 survey found that 80% of organizations report no meaningful impact from AI. Most of that gap isn't about the technology, it's about context. A Harvard Business School study found that people using AI with persistent context produced work that was 40% higher quality and 25% faster. Same AI, same prompts, and the only difference was whether it actually knew what you were trying to do.
Yes, ChatGPT has memory and Claude has Projects, but they only work inside that one platform. If a better model comes out next month, your context doesn't come with you. Open Brain is model-agnostic, open-source, and runs on your own infrastructure. Think of it less like a feature and more like owning your own data.
The short version: Every time your AI starts a new conversation, it forgets everything. Open Brain is an open-source tool that makes it remember, across every tool and every session. I set it up in a weekend. The guide below walks you through it.
Try This Right Now: Open your most recent AI conversation. Count how many messages you spent re-explaining who you are, what you do, and what you need. That's your amnesia tax. Mine was about 45 minutes per session before I fixed it.
The guide walks you through setting up your own Open Brain step by step. It's free, open-source, and runs on your infrastructure. You can have it running by this weekend.
Every week this newsletter covers the overlap between human leadership and AI leadership. How to lead people, how to lead with AI, and what happens when those two worlds collide. If that's useful to you, stick around.
— Carlo Del Donno, MD, CPT