Cortex

Your second brain, powered by Claude.

Cortex is a local-first productivity dashboard that syncs with Claude. As you talk to Claude, it automatically populates your dashboard with tasks, people, projects, context, and more. Everything is stored locally on your machine.

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How it works

You talk to Claude (Desktop or Cowork)
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Claude calls Cortex MCP tools
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Data writes to local SQLite (~/.cortex/cortex.db)
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Cortex dashboard updates in real time

Cortex ships with an MCP server that gives Claude tools to read and write your data. Claude learns to use these tools proactively — when you mention a task, a person, or a life update, it saves it to Cortex automatically.

Features

• Tasks — Tracked automatically from conversations. Filter by category, check off items, export completed tasks.
• People — Everyone Claude knows about you, with structured details and relationship context.
• Projects — Your initiatives with status, links, and related tasks/people.
• Context — Life areas (finances, health, housing, work) with key data tables and history.
• Glossary — Acronyms and terms from your world.
• Quick notes — Capture something from the dashboard. Claude processes it on next sync.
• Search — Cmd+K to search across everything.
• Inline editing — Click any text to edit. Changes persist immediately.
• Activity feed — See what Claude changed and when.
• Export — Download everything as markdown.
• Dark mode — Follows system preference.

Install

Download

Download the latest .dmg from Releases.

Requires Node.js installed on your machine.

Setup

1. Open Cortex and click Install — this registers the MCP server with Claude Desktop.
2. Restart Claude Desktop.
3. Copy the instruction from the setup screen and paste it into Claude — this tells Claude to proactively update Cortex. One time only.
4. Type /cortex-setup in Claude Desktop (or ask Claude to "populate my Cortex dashboard" in Cowork).

That's it. Your dashboard will populate automatically.

Staying in sync

• Claude updates Cortex as you talk — no manual action needed.
• Use /cortex-sync in Claude Desktop to do a full refresh.
• Check off tasks in Cortex — Claude respects dashboard state as source of truth.
• Use Cmd+N to add quick notes that Claude will process on next sync.

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install
cd mcp-server && npm install && npm run build && cd ..

# Run the dev server
npm run dev

# Run Electron in dev mode (in a separate terminal)
NODE_ENV=development npx electron .

# Build for production
npm run dist

Project structure

cortex/
  electron/          Electron main process
  mcp-server/        MCP server (Claude integration)
    src/
      index.ts       MCP tools and prompts
      db.ts          SQLite schema
  src/
    app/             Next.js app routes and API
    components/      React components
    lib/             Store, types, utilities
  public/            Static assets

Tech stack

• Next.js 16 — App framework
• Electron — Desktop shell
• SQLite (better-sqlite3) — Local database
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) — Claude integration
• Tailwind CSS v4 — Styling
• Framer Motion — Animations
• Geist — Typography

Data

All data is stored locally at ~/.cortex/cortex.db. Nothing is sent to any server. The MCP server runs as a local subprocess of Claude Desktop.

License

MIT