Terminal UI

The Cortex TUI is a full-featured terminal interface built with Textual for managing agents, rules, skills, hooks, watch mode, and related Cortex assets.

Launching 

cortex tui

View Switching

Key View
0 AI Assistant
1 Overview
2 Agents
3 Rules
4 Skills
5 LLM Skills
6 Commands
7 Hooks
8 Memory
9 Watch Mode
M MCP Servers
E Export
T Tasks
W Worktrees
A Asset Manager
F Settings

Global Shortcuts

Key Action
Ctrl+P Command Palette
Ctrl+R Rate selected skill
Ctrl+E Export context
Ctrl+Q Quit
? Help

AI Assistant View

Press 0 to open the AI assistant view. It shows:

  • Intelligent recommendations with confidence scores
  • Agent suggestions from learned patterns
  • Context analysis (files, detected contexts)
  • Quick actions via keyboard shortcuts

Press A in this view to auto-activate recommended agents.

Agent Management

Press 2 for the agents view:

  • Browse all 29 active agents
  • View dependencies and triggers
  • Activate/deactivate agents
  • See model assignments

Skills And Commands

The skill system has two complementary views:

  • Press 4 for the Skills view.
  • Press 6 for the Commands view.

The Commands view is populated from the installed skill library, not from a separate hand-maintained command catalog. In practice:

  • skill metadata comes from SKILL.md
  • slash commands are derived from skill paths or explicit command frontmatter
  • cortex install link generates the installed ~/.claude/commands/ aliases

Asset Manager

Press A for the Asset Manager:

Key Action
i Install asset
u Uninstall asset
d Diff installed vs source
U Update all
I Bulk install by category
T Set target directory

Worktree Manager

Press W for worktree management:

Key Action
Ctrl+N Add worktree
Ctrl+O Open worktree
Ctrl+W Remove worktree
Ctrl+K Prune stale worktrees
B Set base directory

Command Palette

Press Ctrl+P to open the command palette, then type to search:

  • Skill... – run skill-oriented actions (info, versions, deps, analytics)
  • Configure LLM Providers – set up multi-LLM consult
  • Any TUI action by name

Skill Ratings

In the Skills view (4), select a skill and press Ctrl+R to open the rating dialog. You can assign 1-5 stars and optionally write a review.