Question 1

What is Brigade?

Accepted Answer

Brigade is a self-hostable crew of AI agents arranged on a real org chart. They delegate work, hand tasks off between models with no context loss, remember across sessions through a shared memory called Tideline, and act inside the tools and channels you already use.

Question 2

Is Brigade free and open source?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Brigade is MIT licensed and free to self-host today, with a managed cloud service coming soon. You only pay for the AI model usage you run through it, or nothing at all if you use a local model.

Question 3

Can I self-host Brigade and run it locally?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Brigade is CLI-first and runs on your own machine or server, so your data and credentials stay with you. It works with local models through Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, as well as hosted providers.

Question 4

How is Brigade different from Claude Code or OpenClaw?

Accepted Answer

Brigade runs agents on a real org chart with goal-based routing, ships Tideline managed long-term memory, plugs into 1,000+ apps via Composio, and lets agents self-improve under your sign-off behind five layers of security. Most alternatives leave memory, integrations, and security for you to wire up.

Question 5

What is Tideline?

Accepted Answer

Tideline is Brigade's proprietary long-term memory, built in-house. It is a real memory graph with typed links between facts, not a notes file replayed into the prompt. It keeps what matters, lets the rest fade, self-improves under your approval, and resists poisoning from untrusted pages.

Question 6

What apps and models does Brigade work with?

Accepted Answer

Brigade connects to 1,000+ apps through Composio, including Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Notion, Jira, and Linear, plus 20+ chat channels. It runs across any model, including Claude, GPT, Gemini, Llama, GLM, DeepSeek, Qwen, and MiniMax.

Question 7

How do I install Brigade?

Accepted Answer

Install it from npm with npm i -g @spinabot/brigade (Node 22.12 or newer), or use the one-click self-host flow. There is nothing to host for the managed service when it launches; today you can run the whole crew on your own machine for free.