Genspark SecondBrain: Setup, Sources and the Note Recorder

Genspark SecondBrain is a memory layer for your Genspark account. It imports your Genspark Project History plus roughly the last six months of Gmail or Outlook, up to 6,000 emails, and keeps them searchable; twelve other apps are read live only when you ask. You do not need the SecondBrain Note recorder to use it. Setup takes three moves: connect sources, load your own files, then put Super Agent to work on what it holds. The Note adds 300 transcription minutes a month with each device purchase, no subscription required. Check the privacy defaults first.

What SecondBrain holds, and what stays outside it

Two products share the name. SecondBrain is software inside your Genspark account, while SecondBrain Note is a separate recorder you buy. The software splits its sources into two kinds. Imported sources sit inside SecondBrain and are always searchable: Genspark Project History, Gmail and Outlook. Live sources are queried at the moment you ask, with no bulk import, so nothing from them is copied in ahead of time. That split matters for speed and for privacy. A question about last spring's email is answered from the import, while a question about a Notion page goes out to Notion each time.^[1]

The twelve live connectors are Notion, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Google Drive, Box, Slack, Salesforce, Google Docs, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar. Meeting notes form a third stream of material. They arrive from AI Meeting Notes, from GenTeam channel calls, and from SecondBrain Note or VoicePad recordings. Storage for everything you import comes out of your AI Drive allowance, and that allowance depends on the plan you hold.

A personal plan and an active organization plan add together, so a Plus member inside a Team organization counts both allowances. Team and Enterprise plans also include a Team Drive, which can be shared as Restricted, with anyone in your organization, or with anyone holding the link. An organization can turn public links off entirely, and the option then disappears for members. On a personal plan with no organization, the share dialog offers only Restricted or Anyone with the link. There is no organization-wide option.

Step one: connect your mail and the apps you live in

Project History needs no action, because it is on from the start with no authorization. Meeting capture is also on by default. Decide about both before connecting anything else, since they begin collecting on day one. Then connect Gmail or Outlook. Genspark imports roughly the last six months, up to 6,000 emails, and keeps the mailbox synced afterwards. Switching the mailbox off later disconnects it and deletes its imported mail from SecondBrain. Turning it back on starts a fresh import, so a quick off-and-on is never a harmless toggle.

Each live connector then signs in on its own, with two exceptions worth knowing in advance. HubSpot connects with a Private App token that you create inside HubSpot and paste into the connect dialog, rather than through a normal sign-in. Microsoft is the trap. Turning off Outlook Calendar or Microsoft Teams also disconnects your other Microsoft connections, including Outlook mail, because Microsoft cannot revoke one service alone. Treat every Microsoft connection as one bundle. If you only wanted to drop the calendar, reconnect Outlook mail deliberately afterwards and confirm that it is syncing again.

Step two: load the files that live nowhere else

Mail and apps cover most of a working week, but notes, exports and old documents need an import. The import into Private Notes accepts .md, .csv, .html, .pdf and .zip files, up to 500 MB per selection. A Notion export gets its own path: one .zip of up to 1 GB. Do not confuse it with the Notion row on the Sources screen. That row is the live connection, which reads Notion when you ask a question. The export is a one-time copy that then counts against your storage like any other imported file.

Which route fits? Use the live connector when the Notion workspace keeps changing and you want answers from today's version of each page. Use the export when you are leaving Notion, or when a frozen archive is exactly what you need to search. Every import draws on the AI Drive allowance in the table above, and Free accounts have 1 GB, so a large archive belongs on a paid plan or stays live. You can also send items from your phone: the SecondBrain Telegram bot is a separate bot that saves what you send and does not reply with AI.

Step three: ask questions and hand the work to Super Agent

Once sources are connected, Super Agent can act on SecondBrain data. Genspark's own examples are triaging email, querying HubSpot or Salesforce records, creating slides from notes, summarizing meeting recordings and generating weekly reports. A weekly report is the cleanest first test, because it touches imported mail, live apps and meeting notes in one run. Super Agent cannot schedule anything by itself, though. A report that should arrive every Monday belongs in Workflows, which our Genspark AI playbook walks through alongside Skills and Custom Agents.

Cost depends on the tier you pick. Standard and Ultra are billed differently. On personal Plus and Pro plans, Standard turns in SecondBrain draw on the weekly Free Quota and are marked as covered by free quota, at no credit cost while that weekly balance lasts.^[2] Once it runs out, turns switch to credits automatically; the Ask First setting, off by default, makes Genspark ask before it spends them. Ultra uses credits. Free accounts and Team or Enterprise seats get no Free Quota, so every SecondBrain turn there is paid in credits. Across the product, credits go to every run and retry, monthly credits do not roll over, and a text job's cost shows only after it runs.

Adding SecondBrain Note: the recorder and its minutes

The Note is optional hardware. Each purchase includes 300 transcription minutes a month, covering transcription and AI summaries, with no Genspark subscription required. Past those minutes, an account without a subscription pays from its 100 daily free credits at about 5 credits a minute, and processing pauses when the day's credits run out until they reset. That refill is not endless: the daily free credits stop once the lifetime cap on free credits is reached. Plus and Pro remove that ceiling, with unlimited transcription and summaries across all your devices. Recording itself is always free. Only AI processing uses credits.^[3]

Know what the output looks like before you rely on it. Recordings under 2 minutes give a transcript only, while longer ones give a full summary plus the transcript. There is no real-time transcription in the current release, so notes appear after the recording ends. The device records with your phone off and transfers later, but transcription, summaries and syncing need the phone. A full charge supports up to 35 hours of continuous recording. One device pairs with one phone at a time, while one account can register several devices and also work on another phone or the web.

Two practical limits remain. Headsets are not supported when recording phone calls, because the vibration sensor picks up voices from the phone's earpiece speaker. If the device misbehaves, hold the button until it reboots with a single vibration; pairing survives, and the app needs Bluetooth and local network permissions. Buying is limited too. The Note ships only to the United States, Japan and South Korea. Returns are accepted within 30 days of receipt for unopened, sealed boxes only, and you pay return shipping unless the device is faulty or defective.

Consent, encryption and cleaning up

Recording people is your legal responsibility. SecondBrain does not obtain consent for you or decide whether a recording is lawful; you must notify participants and get any consent the law requires. Genspark says recordings are encrypted in transfer, processed under a framework certified with SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and deleted from the device right after transfer to the app. That protects the path from device to cloud. It does nothing for the people in the room. For a wider data review, our Genspark buyer's checklist covers who runs the service and how training opt-outs work.

Cleaning up has its own rules. Deleting a meeting note removes its transcript, summary, video, exports and chat from SecondBrain and memory, yet emails already sent stay with the people who received them. Switching off a mailbox deletes its imported mail, as described above. SecondBrain projects cannot be moved to another account in the app, so build on the account you intend to keep. If voice is how you capture ideas at your desk, Genspark Speakly covers dictation and its own route into meeting notes.

Should you start with the software or the recorder?

Start with the software. It needs no device, and Project History plus an imported mailbox already give Super Agent six months of context to work from on day one. Add the Note only if you record in-person conversations often, live in one of its three shipping countries, and accept that notes arrive after the recording ends. Without a subscription, the 300 included minutes a month and the daily free credits, which stop at a lifetime cap, set the ceiling; on Plus or Pro, transcription is unlimited, so heavy recorders get the most from the pair. Either way, settle meeting capture and consent before the first conversation is saved.