how-it-works
How the Brain Works — one question, two brains
The brain-architecture explainer video: one real member question traced through the private member brain and the shared global brain, then the flywheel that makes both smarter — staged honestly as TODAY / NEXT / FUTURE.
▶ Watch the 3:16 summary — One Question — how MemberIntel thinks
A 3¼-minute explainer of MemberIntel’s two-brain architecture, produced with OpenMontage for the team and Blair. It follows one real question — “Why did my churn spike?”, asked against a real connected member site — and shows everything that happens in the seconds before the answer appears.
What it covers
- What the member sees — the answer anatomy on the real product: the site’s actual numbers, playbook-grounded advice, feedback thumbs.
- The member brain (private) — the four knowledge layers the AI keeps per member: how you want advice delivered, key facts about your site, a live stats snapshot, and what it has learned from your conversations. Private to the member, full stop. Personalization happens by talking to it — Blair’s framing from the 2026-07-07 review.
- The global brain (shared library) — the three shelves that exist today: the MemberPress knowledge base, the expert playbook corpus (98 approved entries at time of production), and de-identified member research. Nothing lands on a shelf without a human approving it.
- The flywheel — staged honestly: TODAY (syncs freshen the member brain, playbooks grow weekly), NEXT (research findings flowing in behind a final review gate), FUTURE (patterns learned across sites — anonymized, opt-in, patterns-never-data; designed, not built).
Vocabulary note (internal ↔ on-screen)
The video deliberately uses the product’s public names. For anyone mapping it back to the architecture docs: Your Preferences = SOUL, Site Knowledge = BIBLE, Live Stats = HEARTBEAT, Conversation Insights / Sessions = MEMORY (per the customer-brain four-document architecture, ADR-0015). “A human approves everything” = the content-lead review/staging gate; “patterns, never data” = the k-anonymity + consent + de-identification posture.
Provenance
Produced 2026-07-07 from the “One Question” creative brief (OpenMontage project memberintel-brains). This cut already reflects the Q2-review UI decisions of 2026-07-07 — no citation chips or sources panel, no brain-editor tabs; those surfaces were re-told as brand graphics. Requested by Blair for the living documentation (innovations#234).