Below is a video of a discussion Dave J. and I had today regarding what we envision for V.1 of BrainDrive and what we believe the milestones are that we need to work towards on the way to that.
We’ve made great progress on the roadmap discussed in the post that started this thread. However, our aspirations have expanded since then as to what we want to accomplish with our V.1 version.
Below is a recording of my and @DJJones discussion from earlier this week where we went over our new vision for our V.1 roadmap and beyond. I have also put together a draft of that roadmap which you can see at the link below:
Discussion Recording:
This is still a work in progress and will post back here once we have finalized.
Dave J and I went over the first draft of BrainDrive’s Roadmap and are aligned so this is what we will be working off of going forward and these are the 5 phases:
Foundation
Dev Beta
Dev Release
V.1 Release
Community Acceleration.
Yoou can see a big picture overview of what each phase entails in the BrainDrive Roadmap, and you can see the granular to do items that we have already identified and will be working off of by phase in the BrainDrive Project Board.
It’s really cool to see everything coming together and we welcome your feedback, ideas and contributions as we continue our mission of building a superior user-owned alternative to Big Tech AI systems.
After careful consideration Dave J and I have decided to shift our near term focus back to the privacy focused user who wants to run a local AI system.
As you can see above we had recently refocused the Roadmap around developers. And empowering builders to build on top of BraindDrive is still at the heart of our mission for building a superior alternative to Big Tech AI systems.
What we have realized in the last couple of weeks with that focus however, is that we are actually a lot closer than we thought to having something that we are really excited about for the average person who wants to run their own AI system.
So we’ve reshuffled the Roadmap accordingly. We’re currently in the final stages of finishing phase 1, the foundation with the last items on the list being the one click installers Dave J hopes to finish this week.
Then we will move into phase 2 (Own) which is all about polishing the local, persona, and Rag based functionality that we have been working on for the last couple of months. That will be followed by Phase 3 (Build) Phase 4 (Benefit/Earn) and then Phase 5 community acceleration.
I think this lines up nicely with how we plan to build a superior user-owned AI system to Big Tech, by making it easy to own, build, and benefit from your own AI system.
Both the Roadmap and the github project tracker have been updated accordingly, and you can see our full discussion on this below.
Questions, comments, concerns, and ideas welcome as always. Just hit the reply button.
Dave J. and I had a good discussion in today’s weekly dev call livestream around the near term roadmap. You can view the full discussion in the recording linked to above, and here is a summary for anyone following this roadmap thread:
2025 was primarily about building the BrainDrive foundation. That foundation includes:
Install + run BrainDrive locally
Chat with local models (and optionally API models)
Personas (custom system prompts / personalities)
Plugin manager (install plugins from any GitHub, or install privately)
Page builder (custom interfaces)
Document chat (CAG) and local RAG (chat with your docs privately)
Our near-term roadmap is about making these foundational pieces solid and ready for launch.
Where we are today
Install + run BrainDrive locally
Terminal install works on Linux, Windows, and Mac
Windows installer is in the final stages (a couple small issues remaining)
Mac installer exists but needs testing and we’re assessing scope to get it fully working
Next steps: finalize the Windows installer; investigate Mac installer effort and decide whether it’s in the next launch.
Chat with local + API models
Done. Local chat works out of the box, and you can optionally install OpenRouter for API-based models.
Personas
Done. Create personas and use them throughout BrainDrive to tailor model behavior.
Plugin manager
Done. One-click install from any GitHub (plus updates/removal, and private/offline install options).
Page builder
Done. Add pages and drag/drop/resize plugins with the WYSIWYG builder.
Document chat (CAG + RAG)
CAG is done (upload a document and chat with it locally and/or via API models)
RAG works on Linux and is close on Windows (known issues: PDF dependency, restart behavior, and some performance/install-time investigation)
Mac RAG needs a supported turnkey path
Next steps: get RAG fully solid on Windows and establish the Mac RAG path.
Bottom line
The foundation is essentially built. The last “launch-ready” items are:
Finalizing installers (Windows + a decision/plan for Mac)
Getting local RAG fully solid across Windows and Mac
Questions, comments, concerns, and ideas welcome as always. Just hit the reply button.
Terminal install works on Linux, Windows, and Mac
Windows installer is in the final stages (a couple small issues remaining)
Mac installer exists but needs testing and we’re assessing scope to get it fully working