v0.5.0 — The brain that thinks back

v0.5 closes the gap v0.4 revealed: Cortex captured conversations but didn't capture learnings. The digest told me what topic a chat was about; it rarely told me what was concluded. v0.5 adds atomic-learning extraction (the high-signal layer), a daily journal (the user's own thinking, first-class), and cortex add (capture from anywhere a shell reaches). See docs/V05-THINKING.md for the reasoning.

Privacy-first desktop app: captures AI conversations from Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini into a local knowledge graph. Nothing leaves your machine.

What changed

• Atomic-learning extraction. After every capture, a local Ollama pass (llama3.2:3b in JSON mode, or CORTEX_EXTRACT_MODEL) extracts up to five short sentences capturing what was concluded, decided, or worth remembering. Each learning becomes a first-class memory (source='derived', derived_from=<parent.id>) — searchable, taggable, exportable like any other memory. The digest reads from learnings instead of parent chats; the parent stays as substrate.
  • Tolerant JSON parser handles common Ollama failure modes: markdown code fences, leading prose, trailing commas, {"learnings": [...]} envelopes.
  • Dedupe-against-existing logic so re-extracting a re-captured conversation doesn't duplicate.
  • Single-flight per parent id; null-safe when Ollama is down.
• Daily journal — first-class memory type. New source='journal' memories, one per day. In-app Journal view (Ctrl+5): debounced autosave, recent-entries sidebar, paired-with-digest hint. CLI: cortex journal "what you've been thinking" for one-liners; cortex journal --edit opens $EDITOR on the day's entry; bare cortex journal prints today's entry. The user's own thinking lives alongside captured chats.
• cortex add for terminal quick-capture. cortex add "scheduler-by-priority idea from podcast" --tag idea. Stdin-aware (echo "thought" | cortex add). Source defaults to cli. Bridges meetings, walks, podcasts to Cortex via voice-to-text or any shell pipe.
• MCP server v0.5 — two new tools (cortex_extract, cortex_journal), totals 11. cortex_journal reads today's entry by default or upserts when content is supplied; cortex_extract returns derived learnings (or triggers extraction in the in-app context).
• In-app Learnings panel on every memory's detail panel. Shows derived learnings as clickable cards; "extract" button kicks Ollama on demand. Derived memories show a "↑ Parent conversation" link back.
• Schema v8 — memories.derived_from column + idx_memories_derived_from partial index (only indexes the derived rows) + idx_memories_journal_day for the hot "today's entry" lookup. Forward-only, idempotent.

What slipped (deliberately)

• Local read-only web companion (cortex.local on the LAN). Smaller win than expected; deferred to v0.6 where it can be paired with mobile-friendly capture.
• Encrypted P2P sync. Pushed to v0.6+ — single-machine is the common case and the engineering cost (key management, conflict resolution, NAT traversal) is enormous.

Verified this release

• 453/453 tests green (434 → 453, +19 across extract / journal / MCP).
• MCP smoke harness: 14/14 checks on the 11-tool surface.
• CLI smoke: cortex add, cortex journal (write + read + edit + stdin), cortex recent --source cli all correct.
• The CLI is pre-v7-DB tolerant — INSERTs don't reference v7/v8 columns, so it works against unmigrated DBs (the Electron app handles migration on its next launch).
• npm run build clean across all three processes + worker chunk.

Stack

Electron 31 · React 18 · TypeScript 5 · Tailwind 3 · better-sqlite3 12 · sqlite-vec 0.1 · Fastify 5 · D3 7 · Zustand 4 · Vitest 4 · local Ollama (all-minilm for embeddings, llama3.2:3b for summarization + extraction, both optional with graceful degradation). 453/453 tests passing.