BrandMan

BrandMan is an agent-first brand brain. It keeps a brand's mission, voice, compliance rules, audience personas, sources, campaigns, and results in one place, and lets AI agents (through MCP) and people (through a dashboard) work from that same record.

This repository is the AGPL-3.0 open core. It is free software and is not paywalled. You can run, modify, and self-host it with no BrandMan Cloud account. If you run a modified version as a network service, the AGPL requires you to offer that source to the people who use the service. The BrandMan name and logo are not covered by the license.

BrandMan Cloud is a separate paid product. It is this core plus closed components (a hosted service, billing, multi-tenancy, and similar). Cloud has more features. The open core is the smaller, functional system: one SQLite database, a password-gated dashboard, and an MCP server you run yourself. Cloud is not in this repository, and you do not need it to use the core.

Status: early (0.1.x). The core runs and is tested. Expect rough edges and breaking changes.

What the open core does

• Brand context. Mission, voice, guidelines, personas, and compliance rules, readable by agents and people.

• Content workflow. Sources, campaigns, channel drafts, and newsletter issues.

• Exact-revision approval. A person approves one revision. The MCP server can draft and submit that revision. It has no tool that approves or publishes. Editing an approved item clears the approval, bumps the revision, and sends it back to draft. Nothing is posted to a channel automatically.

• Feedback. Record what a channel did, propose a learning, and accept it into the brand context only with an explicit decision.

• Missions. Time-boxed goals with a baseline, a target, and a trajectory.

• MCP. The same flows for Claude, Cursor, and Codex, over stdio (brandman-mcp) or a hosted OAuth endpoint (/mcp).

• Dashboard and REST API. Operator UI at /app, and the API behind it.

• Channels at the edge. X and Beehiiv are replaceable adapters. The brand record does not live inside a channel.

Related MCP server: harvey-design-system-mcp

Install

Python 3.11 or newer. Package installers download the latest brandman release on PyPI. This repository can be ahead of that release. The wheel includes the dashboard, so a PyPI install does not need Node.js.

pip install brandman
# or: uv tool install brandman
# or: pipx install brandman

In an empty directory:

brandman init     # writes .env (mode 600) and brandman.db, then asks for the brand
brandman serve    # http://127.0.0.1:8000/app

Sign in with BRANDMAN_PREVIEW_PASSWORD from .env. Pass --name, --mission, --voice, --compliance, and -y to skip the prompts.

brandman init sets the brand's approval policy to human_approval_required.

Connect Claude, Cursor, or Codex

brandman mcp-config prints a config for this install. --client accepts claude-desktop (the default), claude-code, cursor, codex, and json.

When brandman-mcp is on PATH, the printed command is that executable. When it is not, the command is uvx --from brandman brandman-mcp. That uvx form is a real entry point of the package (brandman-mcp), not a separate installer. uvx brandman starts the brandman CLI instead, which is the wrong process for an MCP client.

Claude Desktop and Cursor use the same JSON (claude_desktop_config.json, .cursor/mcp.json). This is the block printed when brandman-mcp is not on PATH:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brandman": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "brandman", "brandman-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "BRANDMAN_DB": "/absolute/path/brandman.db",
        "BRANDMAN_DATABASE_PROFILE": "operating"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

claude mcp add brandman \
  -e BRANDMAN_DB=/absolute/path/brandman.db \
  -e BRANDMAN_DATABASE_PROFILE=operating \
  -- uvx --from brandman brandman-mcp

Codex writes ~/.codex/config.toml:

codex mcp add brandman \
  --env BRANDMAN_DB=/absolute/path/brandman.db \
  --env BRANDMAN_DATABASE_PROFILE=operating \
  -- uvx --from brandman brandman-mcp

brandman mcp-config --client codex prints that command. brandman mcp-config --help lists the clients the installed release knows. The codex mcp add line above talks to the same brandman-mcp server either way.

A deployed BrandMan serves MCP at https://your-host/mcp (OAuth 2.1, PKCE, dynamic client registration):

brandman mcp-config --client claude-code --url https://your-host
# claude mcp add --transport http brandman https://your-host/mcp

brandman mcp-config --client codex --url https://your-host
# codex mcp add brandman --url https://your-host/mcp

Useful first tools: list_brands, get_brand_context, create_editorial_candidate, create_campaign, draft_post, create_newsletter_issue, revise_newsletter_issue, get_active_mission, report_product_gap. The full list is the tools on brandman-mcp.

Run this repository

Requires uv and Node.js 22.12+ with npm. The dashboard source is tracked; generated files under brandman/static/app/ are not.

git clone https://github.com/AustinNChristensen/brandman.git
cd brandman
uv sync --locked
uv run python scripts/build_dashboard.py
uv run brandman init
uv run brandman serve
uv run brandman mcp-config --client cursor

uv build (with Node on the build machine) produces a wheel that already contains the dashboard. Editable installs do not build the frontend on their own.

Docker

cp .env.example .env    # set BRANDMAN_PREVIEW_PASSWORD (16+ characters)
docker compose up -d    # http://127.0.0.1:8000/app

The published port is loopback-only. See deployment.

Optional built-in drafting

MCP agents do not need this. To draft from a source without an external agent:

pip install 'brandman[anthropic]'
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=…
brandman draft --brand my-brand --source <source-id>

That creates a draft campaign. It does not approve or publish it.

brandman-worker runs one scheduler tick and due jobs. Run it from cron, or use the Compose file, which ticks every five minutes.

The brand-os-* commands, BRAND_OS_* variables, and the brandos_session cookie still work. brandman-* and BRANDMAN_* are the primary names.

Documentation

• Getting started

• MCP clients

• Configuration

• Seed packs

• Deployment

• Extending BrandMan

For a host that serves a checkout, build the dashboard before starting the API. A wheel install already has those assets. Keep the database on durable storage. Set BRANDMAN_ALLOWED_HOSTS and BRANDMAN_REQUIRE_HTTPS=true behind TLS. Do not commit .env or a database file.

Development

uv sync --locked
uv run python scripts/build_dashboard.py
uv run pytest

Frontend: cd web && npm ci && npm test && npm run build.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Contributors sign a CLA. Contributions are released under AGPL-3.0.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Austin Christensen.

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. The open core is not paywalled. If you run a modified version as a network service, you must offer its source to the users of that service.