cortex-mcp

cortex-mcp is a skill for Cursor from synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault. It costs 41 tokens per session (685 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for connecting the Cortex knowledge system to programs that support MCP, a standard way for AI clients to call external tools. It documents reading, writing, searching, and giving feedback in a knowledge vault through local or authenticated connections.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when setting up Cortex with Claude Desktop, Cursor, or another MCP client over HTTP or standard input/output, and when troubleshooting its server integration.
Why use it?
It explains how to configure the connection, authentication, transport, and tool calls so an MCP client can use Cortex reliably.

Skill for Cursor

Written for Cursor: installed under .cursor/.

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault/cortex-mcp
Any agent
npx skills add synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault --skill cortex-mcp
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cortex-mcp

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault/cortex-mcp.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault/cortex-mcp)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault/cortex-mcp"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault/cortex-mcp.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 685 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00041 $0.00685
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00342
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00137
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00068

Measured 6d ago against content hash 084dee9dbfb3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cortex-mcp scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/skills/cortex-mcp/SKILL.md · 77 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 77 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Cortex MCP

Transports

Mode How Config
HTTP http://localhost:8420/mcp/ CORTEX_MCP_TRANSPORT=http, Docker or scripts/serve.py
stdio Claude Desktop subprocess CORTEX_MCP_TRANSPORT=stdio

HTTP uses FastMCP streamable HTTP (stateless_http=True, JSON responses).

Authentication

AUTH_METHOD MCP behavior
none Open
apikey x-api-key header must match API_KEY / CORTEX_API_KEY
oidc FastMCP OIDCProxy (browser login); API key fallback if configured

REST uses AuthMiddleware; MCP uses ApiKeyGuardMiddleware when apikey. See cortex-auth.

HTTP session flow

  1. POST /mcp/initialize (JSON-RPC 2.0)
  2. Save mcp-session-id response header if present
  3. notifications/initialized
  4. tools/call with name and arguments

Header: Accept: application/json, text/event-stream

Implementation map

Layer File
Tool handlers (shared with REST logic) cortex/mcp/tools.py
HTTP tool registration cortex/mcp/http_server.py
stdio server cortex/mcp/server.py
Mount on FastAPI app mount_mcp_on_app() in http_server.py

Handlers receive injected services: vault_path, graph, qmd, qmd_debounce, compiler.

Cursor integration

This project may register a local MCP server (e.g. user-cortex_local) pointing at http://localhost:8420/mcp/ with x-api-key when auth is enabled.

Use MCP tools for agent workflows; prefer vault_context for RAG-style retrieval.

Tool list

See reference.md for all 10 tools (including vault_resource_read), parameters, and return shapes.

MCP resources (cortex://resource/{id})

Token-heavy tool outputs can be opted into the server-side resource store via as_resource: true on vault_search / vault_context (and GET /api/v1/search?as_resource=true on REST). The store is in-memory, TTL-bounded, and LRU-capped; tune with CORTEX_RESOURCE_TTL_SECONDS and CORTEX_RESOURCE_MAX_ITEMS. See reference.md for details.

Read the full file on GitHub · 77 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 77 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A 084dee9dbfb3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cortex-mcp is a skill published in the GitHub repository synpulse8-opensource/pulse8-ai-cortex-knowledge-vault (14 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 685 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

session-ingest

Ingest a coding session JSONL into AKB as structured notes — session report + parallel-drafted TIL / task / idea / decision sub-notes. Auto-discovers the current session's JSONL when no positional path is given (Claude / Codex). --delegate {target} fires the work to another target's CLI and exits.

dnotitia/akb · 74 tokens

akb-query

Answer a question from the AKB vault — decompose, search (hybrid / graph), ground in compiled-truth-over-timeline precedence, and synthesize a cited answer with gap/conflict/stale flags. Read-only.

dnotitia/akb · 50 tokens

llm-wiki-query

Answer operator questions using the LLM Wiki as the primary source of truth, and optionally file reusable syntheses back into the wiki. Use whenever the operator asks a question about wiki content, queries the knowledge base, requests a synthesis across sources, or wants an answer based on what has been ingested.

TrueHOOHA/LLM-Wiki · 66 tokens

akb-ingest

Ingest whatever you point at into an AKB vault — a local file, a web URL, a GitHub PR/release/commit, a Confluence page, or a Jira issue. Auto-detects the source type and dispatches to a specialized ingest subagent; the router fetches and writes nothing itself. One target per invocation; globs expand to a sequential…

dnotitia/akb · 87 tokens

wiki-write

Add or update wiki content — autonomous ingest from URL, file, or text; autonomous update of existing pages. Auto-creates .wiki/ on first use. Use when: 'save to wiki', 'remember this', 'note this', 'store this', 'add to knowledge base', 'save findings', 'save research', 'save idea', 'write to wiki', 'ingest', 'add…

Oshayr/LLM-Wiki · 90 tokens

wiki-view

Wiki dashboard — browse pages, view stats, knowledge graph, export. Use on: 'wiki dashboard', 'wiki stats', 'show wiki', 'wiki pages', 'list wiki', 'wiki graph', 'export wiki', 'wiki overview'.

Oshayr/LLM-Wiki · 52 tokens