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The quickstart gets you a brain and an agent that can search it. This page goes one step further: an assistant in Claude Code whose memory is your brain, where every session is filed for you, mail and meetings arrive on their own, and a status line tells you each morning that the feeds are alive. It takes the cortex-assistant plugin, three keys and a short block of text. No code.
1

Get a brain

If you joined a workspace, you already have one: My Work Brain, created from the Personal template and marked as yours. If a workspace admin created your brain instead, check it is marked as yours under Settings, General. Your agents write there unless you name another brain.
2

Connect

From your brain’s Connect page, run the claude mcp add line it shows in the folder your assistant runs from, then /mcp in Claude Code and sign in as yourself. One connection covers every brain you can reach.Install the command line too: npm i -g @oncortex/cli, then cortex login with the same URL. The kit uses it for the status line and the health check.
3

Install the kit

Four pieces, in this order.Enable the plugin. In Claude Code, /plugin, marketplace sopro, enable cortex-assistant. That installs the two hooks, the scheduled scripts and the skills together. Nothing runs yet: they look for settings they do not have.Tell it which brain. Create ~/.config/cortex/ea.json:
cortex whoami prints the ids. From this moment every session starts with a line of brain status.Mint three keys on your brain under Settings, Service credentials, and store each in its own file in ~/.config/cortex/:Keys rather than your sign-in because the hook and the scheduled jobs run when nobody is signed in, and a key is pinned to one brain with one role.Paste the block from the plugin’s README into your CLAUDE.md. Ten lines: the brain is the memory; the brain’s own rules govern filing; check what awaits review at session start; search before answering from memory; put facts on pages at the time; use the task tools; plans live in repositories. Everything else in that file is yours.
4

Turn the feeds on

  • Meetings: connect Granola or Read AI under Settings, Ingest sources, and catch up a couple of weeks.
  • Mail: forward threads to your brain’s address, or set a Gmail filter to forward from the senders you choose. The address is issued on the same Ingest sources page, and Gmail’s confirmation code appears there. If you installed the collector key in step 3, we recommend the collector’s star and archive habit instead: the people who always matter are watched, and a star on anything else files it, with no waiting before you archive.
  • Filing mode: Automatic on your own brain, so the runner files what arrives and parks only what it is unsure about.
  • A description of what the brain holds, on Settings, General, and an Expectations section on the instructions page: one plain sentence per feed and how stale is too stale. The health check grades against it.
5

Check it is alive

Run cortex health --brain <your slug>. Each line is one check, worst first, with the one action that fixes it. Then open a new Claude Code session: the first turn starts with six lines of brain status, and ending the session writes one ok line to ~/.config/cortex/capture.log.Schedule the two scripts the README names: the mail collector every half hour if you use it, and the health check once a morning with the way you want to be told.

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What you get

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Where next

Your personal brain

What makes it yours, and why agents write there by default.

Is it still being fed?

The health check, the Expectations section and what each finding means.

Capturing agent conversations

The session hook on its own, without the plugin.

Tasks

One task page, fed by meetings and mail.