How the software is downloaded
The desktop app is the largest single download channel in this snapshot. The collector stores one combined channel total; this page breaks it out as desktop app downloads, package downloads, and a total across channels. Every row below is a snapshot count as of September 21, 2026, and each names its source.
- App downloadsDesktop release assets.
- 3,589
- Package downloadsnpm and the Obsidian community directory.
- 1,101
- CLI downloadsnpm registry. The last 30 days before this snapshot brought 61; the last week, 26.
- 461
- Obsidian plugin downloadsObsidian community directory.
- 640
- Total downloads across channelsnpm, the Obsidian directory, and the desktop release assets combined.
- 4,690
The Obsidian plugin's own repository separately reports 1,462 release downloads. That figure lives on a different repository from the main app and is not part of the total above.
The repository itself
GitHub reported 775 stars, 117 forks, and 5 watchers on September 21, 2026. This page treats those as the snapshot values they are, not as a promise that they only ever move one way. Clones and views cover the 14 days ending September 19, 2026. Each row says which window it belongs to.
- StarsGitHub snapshot count.
- 775
- ForksGitHub snapshot count.
- 117
- WatchersGitHub snapshot count.
- 5
- ClonesThe 14 days ending September 19, 2026. 253 unique cloners.
- 699
- ViewsSame 14 days. 430 unique visitors.
- 1,251
The satellite repositories keep their own snapshot counts: the Obsidian plugin at 17 stars and 2 forks, the browser extension at 10 stars and 1 fork, all reported on September 21, 2026.
Where visitors came from
GitHub records where each repository view arrived from over the same 14-day window ending September 19, 2026. A view is a page load, not a person.
- github.com69 unique visitors
- 164
- Google43 unique visitors
- 77
- reddit.com46 unique visitors
- 60
- thesecondbrain.dev16 unique visitors
- 39
- chatgpt.com8 unique visitors
- 15
- memorylake.ai12 unique visitors
- 12
No other single source reached 7 views in the window.
What they opened
- The repository overview378 unique visitors
- 657
- The installer-v3.3.0 release12 unique visitors
- 51
- Pull requests11 unique visitors
- 43
- Issues14 unique visitors
- 39
- /blob/main/releases/latest14 unique visitors
- 23
- The wiki12 unique visitors
- 18
- Pull request #3303 unique visitors
- 18
- The fork page14 unique visitors
- 17
Contributions
Merged pull requests have shipped OAuth 2.0 on the MCP endpoint, a fix for searchable updates, and iCloud calendar support, among others.
- Community pull requests mergedSnapshot count. 13 pull requests were opened in total.
- 14
How to read these numbers
These are counters, not a census. Second Brain is self-hosted, so no memory-usage telemetry reaches the project from a running install, and nobody can count the deployments actually running. A download is a copy taken, and so is a clone; neither proves a running brain. The absence of a user total is the design working, not a gap in the data.
Clones and visitors are two separate series GitHub keeps over the same window, and neither contains the other: a clone from a terminal or a CI job never loads a repository page. Any ratio between the two compares independent counts, so it is not a conversion rate in either direction.
The Weighted Engagement Score. The historical report rolls these signals into one index, weighted toward app downloads, then forks, then package downloads, then stars. Recomputing that documented formula from the September 7, 2026 snapshot's own components did not agree with the score that snapshot stored, so this page leaves the score out and keeps the inputs instead. The exact figures on both sides are in the snapshot directory's provenance notes.
Provenance: the snapshot file is the source for the path, referrer, and daily-series rows. GitHub and npm API checks were used only for the headline repository and package totals, not for every nested row. The traffic window ends September 19, 2026; the star-velocity window ends September 21, 2026. The daily series sum reproducibly to 699 clones and 1,251 views, and the combined download arithmetic is 3,589 desktop release downloads + 1,101 package downloads = 4,690 total downloads across channels.
The legacy report
Before this page, the project published an animated traction report under its own address. It still runs, and it fetches live from the collector's public feed, so it can refresh itself with newer numbers than the ones printed here. Two things in it deserve caution: its growth rows were targets the author set, not measurements, and its comparison bands were rules of thumb, not data.