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.
npx skills add XBlueSky/cortexes --skill using-cortexgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/XBlueSky/cortexesWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/xbluesky/cortexes/using-cortex)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xbluesky/cortexes/using-cortex"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xbluesky/cortexes/using-cortex/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xbluesky/cortexes/using-cortex"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xbluesky/cortexes/using-cortex.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00113 | $0.00866 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00045 | $0.00346 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00023 | $0.00173 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00011 | $0.00087 |
Grade A, and why
using-cortex 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 79 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Using Cortex — When to Consult the Vault
The cortex vault is the user's own knowledge base: distilled Notes,
Projects, and Raw session records. This skill decides when
consulting it is warranted, and hands the actual search to the
cortex-query skill.
Retrieval is worth doing when there is a concrete signal that prior context exists. It is not worth doing on speculation — an unprompted search costs the user tokens and latency, and surfacing unrelated notes pollutes the answer.
Search the vault when any of these is true
- Explicit request. The user asks for it: "check cortex", "查一下 cortex", "有沒有記錄過", "do I have notes on this".
- Reference to prior work. The user points at something earlier: "之前那個", "上次的", "我記得有", "我們討論過", "that ticket", "the project we set up", "continue where we left off".
- Listed topic. The request names a topic that the SessionStart hook actually listed for this vault. The list is authoritative — match against what it showed, not against a guess about what might exist.
- Resuming a session. The user asks to pick up, continue, or hand off work from a previous session.
In each case, invoke the cortex-query skill rather than searching the
vault directly — that skill knows the retrieval infrastructure, including
cortex-vec and its fallbacks.
Do not search the vault when
- The user has not given any of the four signals above. A question being difficult, technical, or open-ended is not a signal.
- The user picked option 4 ("直接開始工作") from the SessionStart menu, or skipped the menu. That choice means "do not go to the vault"; honour it for the rest of the session unless the user later asks.
- The user says "don't check cortex", "just answer directly", or similar.
- The task is self-contained: editing code in the current repo, answering from the current turn, or anything the conversation already supplies.
When in doubt, answer directly. If the answer would have been better with vault context, the user can ask — and signal 1 then applies.
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.
- 1mo ago Changed d2f10a13ca80
- 1mo ago First seen · 79 lines · 113 tokens per session scan A eabdb59a9a5c
using-cortex is a skill published in the GitHub repository XBlueSky/cortexes (24 stars, last pushed 29d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 113 tokens to every session and 866 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
llm-wiki
Build and maintain an LLM-curated knowledge base from papers, articles, transcripts, notes and project findings. Ingest sources into linked Markdown, answer questions with citations, lint or upgrade a wiki, and preserve useful synthesis across sessions and agents. Also capture verified task experience, consolidate…
setup
Set up and verify a first memtomem memory source. Use for onboarding, choosing an index path, or confirming that search works.
status
Check memtomem configuration, storage, index counts, dense coverage, and warnings. Use when search is empty, degraded, or needs diagnosis.
orient
Use when user invokes /orient with a topic keyword, entity type, project name, time qualifier, or combination. Also triggers on "what do we know about X", "remind me about X", "where did we leave off on X". Provides targeted context loading — searches the MCP Memory Server graph, knowledge files, journal entries, and…
garden-tending
Tend the knowledge garden — diagnose vault health, condense project memos into project.md overviews, create/merge cross-project topics, fix broken links, archive superseded notes, extend trails. Trigger on "tend the garden", "condense", "update project overview", "check vault health", "where are we with X?", "what…
memory
Use when user invokes /memory with a subcommand (search, trace, add, episode, status). Also triggers on "search my memory for X", "add to memory", "what do I know about X" (when membrain is available), "memory status", "memory trace". Searches and manages the membrain knowledge graph via MCP tools or HTTP API.