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Items in the inbox can be filed by you, by your agent, or by Cortex itself. How much Cortex does on its own is a per-brain setting called its filing mode, which you set in the brain’s settings. It ranges from “do nothing automatically” up to “file confidently and only ask when unsure”.

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The three modes

Off

Cortex files nothing on its own. Items wait in the inbox until you or your agent file them.

Suggest

Cortex does the work but does not commit it: it drafts the pages it would write and parks them, with its reasoning, in the review queue. Accepting is one click.

Automatic

Cortex files items it is confident about, and parks anything uncertain in the review queue as a ready-drafted proposal. The steady, hands-off mode.
In every mode, uncertainty always goes to you. Even on Automatic, Cortex never forces a filing it is unsure of; it parks it in the review queue instead.

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Setting the mode

Open the brain, go to Settings, and on the General tab you will find Filing mode: three choices, Off, Suggest and Automatic, with a line describing each. Changing it is an Owner action, since it decides how autonomously Cortex writes to the brain. Suggest and Automatic use AI to file items, paid for by the workspace under its monthly ingestion limit (below).

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What each brain starts on

  • Your work brain starts on Automatic. It starts as yours alone, so confident filing there is safe, and it keeps your private memory tidy without effort.
  • New shared brains start on Suggest. A shared brain is other people’s space too, so Cortex suggests rather than commits until you decide how much to trust it.
You can leave these defaults as they are, or change them at any time if you are the brain’s Owner.

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It cannot run away

Automatic filing applies only to items that arrive with nobody present: web uploads, webhooks, hooks, files sent from the command line. What your connected agent uploads, the agent files itself, with its own tokens. Cortex’s own filing is paid for by the workspace under a monthly ingestion limit: when the month’s total reaches it, automatic filing pauses for the workspace, the inbox says so, and items wait until the first of next month or until the limit is raised. A single item also has a ceiling on how much work it may take. How ingestion is paid for has the detail and what to do while paused.

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Try it

  1. Open your work brain, go to Settings then General, and find Filing mode (it starts on Automatic).
  2. Drop an item in the inbox and watch it get filed without you.
  3. On a shared brain you own, switch the mode to Suggest and see the difference: filings are proposed and parked for your approval.