lain

a graph-based ideation engine

plant a seed. a graph of tool-using agents branches, researches, and builds on itself — until something extraordinary emerges.

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curl -fsSL https://tetraslam.github.io/lain/install | bash

A self-contained binary — no Node, bun, or pnpm to install; just download and run. It always grabs the latest build (rebuilt from main on every commit that passes CI), so re-running it — or lain update — keeps you current. (No prebuilt binary for your platform? It falls back to a source build.)

lain init                                   # pick a provider, paste a key
lain "a religion that worships entropy" --mission

Every exploration is one portable .db file.

What it does

A seed branches into n directions, recurses to depth m, and every node is expanded by a tool-using agent — never a one-shot completion. Each one can:

• read the whole graph — diverge from and build on other branches
• ground in your corpus — drop in PDFs, notes, CSVs, images
• search & cite the web — the research lens footnotes real sources [1]
• share findings — a discovery in one branch reaches all the others
• call MCP tools & link branches — the graph wires itself together

A mission gives the run a goal and a success checklist, then validates the finished graph against it. A synthesis pass surfaces the connections, contradictions, and emergent patterns. Explore in the CLI, a keyboard TUI, or a web UI — and sync it all to Obsidian.

A taste

lain "what if cities were grown" -n 3 -m 2          # branch an idea
lain "the myth of my setting" --corpus ./lore/      # ground it in your files
lain "the frontier LLM training recipe" --ext research   # cited web sources
lain tui                                            # watch the agents think
lain serve                                          # web UI at :3001

lain tree            lain show root-1            lain mission
lain synthesize      lain export idea.db         lain sync idea.db

MCP tools

Add any remote MCP server and its tools join the agents' toolbelt — a web-search server like Firecrawl is what powers the research lens' citations.

lain mcp add firecrawl https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/<key>/v2/mcp        # key in URL
lain mcp add ctx https://mcp.example.com/v1 --bearer "$TOKEN"        # bearer token
lain mcp add db  https://mcp.example.com/v1 --api-key "$KEY"         # API-key header
lain mcp add svc https://mcp.example.com/v1 --header "X-Org: acme"   # arbitrary headers

lain mcp test svc     # connect + list its tools     lain mcp list     # secrets redacted

Providers

Bedrock · Anthropic · OpenAI · OpenRouter · any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (ollama, together, groq, vLLM) via --base-url. Set with lain init.

Lifecycle

lain doctor          # check install, config, credentials
lain update          # update in place — your .db files and config stay untouched
lain uninstall

From source

The installer ships a prebuilt binary; to build it yourself you need bun + pnpm:

pnpm install
pnpm build:binary     # → dist-bin/lain-<os>-<arch>  (CLI + TUI + web in one file)
pnpm test             # run the suite

Or force a from-source install (clones, provisions bun/node/pnpm, builds, puts a launcher on PATH): LAIN_FROM_SOURCE=1 curl -fsSL https://tetraslam.github.io/lain/install | bash. Internals live in AGENTS.md.

_{named after lain iwakura. everything is connected.}