3 guides
Teaching the assistant about you
Standing instructions, CORTEX.md and what it remembers.
- Write standing instructions the assistant always followsAn instruction file at the root of your vault is injected into every conversation. It can be called CORTEX.md, CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, and exactly one of them is ever in force.
- How the assistant works toward a goal, and how to edit CORTEX.md safelyIn NeuralVault 2.0 a new vault’s CORTEX.md tells the assistant to own a goal you state and only come to you when it must; an existing CORTEX.md is never changed, and when you edit one the assistant reads at most 40,000 bytes and drops the end.
- Ask the assistant to remember something, and where it is keptIn NeuralVault 2.0 "remember that" is an instruction to write to disk: a fact about you goes in your profile and a standing rule goes on the end of CORTEX.md, each behind an approval card.