cjmielke/NeuroAnswer

NeuroAnswer

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1ab99eab-ce4f-44bf-a141-4f0317f659fc

200,000 neurons, 500 million synapses, queryable in plain English — rendered live in 3D!

NeuroAnswer is an AI copilot for exploring the MICrONs Minnie65 connectome dataset, with results rendered directly in Neuroglancer.

v2 Refactor — Claude Sees What You See

The v2 architecture makes a fundamental change: the Neuroglancer viewer is now controlled directly by the MCP server rather than being a separate browser session that the extension had to mirror state into. V1 used the chrome extension and javascript hacks to mutate the state. V2 hosts its own neuroglancer server locally and uses its existing python/websockets API to directly control it. This allows the development of pure MCP NeuroGlancer tools.

This also unlocks a capability that wasn't possible before!

Claude as co-scientist

Claude can now take a screenshot of the active Neuroglancer viewport and interpret it visually — the same view the researcher is looking at, at the same moment. It can identify cell morphology, count visible structures, notice what's in the foreground vs background, and reason about what it sees before deciding what to query next. Combined with the CAVE tools, this closes a loop: observe → query → render → observe again.

Claude identifying neurons, and what might be an astrocyte — from a live screenshot of the 3D mesh view.

What changed

| | v1 | v2 | |---|----------------------------------------------------------------------------