cortex-navigate-knowledge

Navigate Knowledge — Graph Exploration and Causal Chains

Keywords

knowledge graph, relationships, connections, causal chain, how are these related, what connects, drill down, explore, navigate, entity graph, trace, cause and effect, related to, linked to, co-access, cluster

Overview

Cortex maintains a knowledge graph of entities (people, technologies, concepts, files) and their relationships extracted from memories. This skill lets you traverse that graph — follow causal chains, explore co-access patterns, drill into fractal memory clusters, and understand how different pieces of knowledge connect.

Use this skill when: You need to understand relationships between concepts, trace cause-and-effect chains, or explore a topic area systematically.

Workflow

Step 1: Trace Causal Chains

Follow entity relationships through the knowledge graph:

cortex:get_causal_chain({
  "entity": "PostgreSQL",
  "direction": "both",
  "max_depth": 3
})

Returns a chain of entities connected by typed relationships (causes, uses, depends_on, related_to, etc.). Direction can be "forward" (effects), "backward" (causes), or "both".

Step 2: Navigate Co-Access Paths

Find memories frequently accessed together using Successor Representation:

cortex:navigate_memory({
  "memory_id": <starting_memory_id>,
  "depth": 2,
  "max_nodes": 20
})

Returns a graph of memories connected by co-access frequency — revealing implicit relationships that aren't in the explicit knowledge graph.

Step 3: Hierarchical Exploration

Browse memories through fractal clusters (L0 = broad, L1 = mid, L2 = specific):

cortex:recall_hierarchical({
  "query": "authentication system",
  "levels": 3
})

Then drill into any interesting cluster:

cortex:drill_down({
  "cluster_id": "<cluster from hierarchical recall>",
  "level": "L1"
})

Step 4: Detect Structural Gaps

Find disconnected or under-connected areas:

cortex:detect_gaps({
  "domain": "<optional>"
})