A stronger RAG stack is still a retrieval stack. The serve boundary is the product.
| Vector / RAG memory | LBrain | |
|---|---|---|
| What is memory? | Structured facts a model extracted, then retrieved | A governed record a model is allowed to use |
| After retrieval | Fuse, rerank, generate | Admissibility gate: serve, review, or abstain |
| Stale vs current | Timestamps and LLM consolidation | Explicit supersession; newest wins; stale is marked |
| Can it refuse? | Prompt rules and disposition sliders | Fail-closed when the record does not bind |
| Identity | A bank behind a server | A portable local brain; lbrain whoami |
| Benchmark they optimize | Conversational QA leaderboards | Whether the right record is allowed to govern |
Grounding is faithfulness to the record, not truth of the world. LBrain does not cure hallucination.
See it: three cookbooks (abstain, SUPERSEDED, model-swap) in lbrain-coding-agents.