Cortex Hub: Your Home's Personal Memory Engine

Inspired by the fractured, externalized memory of 'Memento', the subtle background AI of 'Neuromancer', and the data aggregation of a web scraper, Cortex Hub transforms a standard smart home into a living memory palace.

The Story & Concept:
Our digital lives are fragmented across countless apps and services—calendars, social media, music history, photos, and emails. Like the protagonist of 'Memento', we lack a unified system to connect these disparate pieces of our own story. Cortex Hub is the solution. It's a piece of software that runs locally (e.g., on a Raspberry Pi) for maximum privacy. It doesn't seek to control your home; it seeks to add a layer of context and memory to it. It is the 'digital ghost' of your own past, living in your home's network, weaving together the threads of your life to present a coherent narrative through subtle environmental cues.

How It Works:

1. Data Ingestion (The 'Scraper' Element): The user securely authorizes Cortex Hub to access their personal data APIs. This includes Google Calendar, Spotify listening history, social media posts, photo libraries, and email metadata (subjects, senders, timestamps). It also integrates with existing smart home platforms like Home Assistant to log events (e.g., when doors are opened, lights are turned on, or thermostats are adjusted).

2. The Memory Core (The 'Memento' Element): All data is processed and stored locally on the user's device. The system doesn't just create a chronological log. It builds an associative map, connecting disparate data points. For example, it might link a specific music playlist to a recurring calendar event, a specific person, and a particular time of year. It finds the forgotten connections that define your life.

3. The Narrative Engine (The 'Neuromancer' Element): This is where the magic happens. The Hub's lightweight AI analyzes the memory core for patterns, anniversaries, and anomalies. It then translates these insights into subtle outputs through existing smart home devices, creating an 'ambient memory' interface:

- Visual Cues: Your smart display in the kitchen might show a photo from this exact day two years ago, captioned, 'Remember this?'. A Philips Hue light in your office could subtly shift to a warmer color when it detects you're working late on a project, just as you did during a previous successful project.

- Audio Cues: As you start your morning coffee, your smart speaker might gently play a song you had on repeat during a happy vacation last year. Instead of a generic alert, it might say, 'A reminder: You have a call with Jane. The last time you spoke was three weeks ago about the marketing budget.'

- Contextual Automation: If you haven't left the house by a certain time on a weekday, the system might trigger a 'focus mode' scene, knowing that you're likely working from home based on past behavior.

Business Model & Niche:
This project is low-cost to develop using Python and open-source libraries. The niche is the 'Quantified Self' community, productivity enthusiasts, and individuals who want more meaningful, personalized interactions from their smart home beyond simple commands. The earning potential is high through a one-time software license ($50-$100) or a premium subscription model that unlocks advanced pattern analysis and more service integrations. Its emphasis on local processing and user privacy is a major selling point against data-hungry cloud services.