Sources · Personal source · export guide
Export your Facebook data into a private AI brain
Facebook’s "Download your information" is the archive people request and never open: hundreds of JSON files. A brain makes it readable — your people, your places, your voice, and Meta’s model of you.
What a Facebook export holds — and what the brain makes of it
The Facebook download holds years of social history that exists nowhere else: who you are friends with and since when, what you posted and reacted to, the pages you liked, the events you said yes to, the places you checked in. It also holds the part Meta built for advertisers — your ad interests, the advertisers who uploaded your details, your off-Meta activity. The brain builder writes each of these into its own layer: friends into people notes, posts and comments into a voice layer, liked pages into interests, check-ins and cities onto a geocoded map, and the ad profile into a mirror layer that shows you how the algorithm sees you.
Because the same person often appears here and in your LinkedIn or Google export, a friend becomes one note across all of them, matched by name. Events are places with dates — the brain knows which city you were in and when. That makes a Facebook export unexpectedly useful for a travel plan or a "who do I know in Berlin" question.
Messenger conversations are signal only: who, how often, how recently. Message bodies are never read.
Get the export
How to export your Facebook data
The exact clicks, as they are today. Platforms move menus; the engine’s source docs are updated when they do.
- 01
accountscenter.facebook.com → Your information and permissions
- 02
Download your information → Facebook profile
- 03
Format JSON · media quality low · date range All time — ready within hours
- 04
Drop the archive on Facebook in Studio’s Sources — or tell Claude Code or Codex “build my brain from this”. The source is detected by itself, even inside a combined archive.
Then, next month
An export is a snapshot. Drop a newer one and press Update: your edits and _notes/ are kept, and the update report says what changed.
Then ask it
What you can ask a brain built from Facebook
Examples, not promises: the answer is whatever your notes hold, and every answer cites the notes it came from. The more exports you add, the more these questions cross sources.
- Which friends have I known the longest and never see online any more?
- Which cities have I checked in from, and who was at the events I attended there?
- What does Meta think I am interested in, based on the ad profile?
- Which pages did I like that match the topics I write about on LinkedIn?
limitChoose the JSON format — the HTML download is for reading in a browser and is not parsed. Media quality can be low; photos are not needed for the brain.
Good to know
The honest answers.
Does it read my Messenger conversations? No. Message bodies are never read; a conversation contributes only who and when, as a relationship-strength signal.
Why are my friends’ email addresses missing from the brain? By design: other people’s emails and phone numbers are dropped at parse time. The brain keeps names and the relationship, not contact details of people who never agreed to be in it.
Start
Your Facebook export already exists. Turn it into a brain.
Free and open source. Start with John’s demo brain while your export arrives.
Second Brain Studio · Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux · free · MIT
Just looking? Open Studio in your browser — two demo brains, nothing to install
