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Cortex Bot gives you a bot with its own computer. Where Cortex Chat answers a question and Cortex Code changes a repository, a bot does things on a desktop: it opens a browser, clicks through a flow, reads and writes files, runs a command, and reports back in a few short messages. You can watch its screen while it works, take the mouse and keyboard yourself, and it parks anything consequential until you decide. A bot is persistent. It keeps its name, its look, its memory, its skills, its routines, its secrets and its files between turns, so it is a standing thing you come back to rather than a thread you start again. Every bot has exactly one computer of its own, created with the bot and retired with it. Bot needs a signed-in Cortex account, because a guest session cannot come back later to revoke what it created. This page is the map of the Bot documentation. Start with the quickstart if you have never made a bot, or go straight to the guide you need.
A Bot workspace with an ongoing conversation, an approval request, and the bot's Cloud computer preview.

Interface preview

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Start here

Bot quickstart

Sign in, create a bot, open its computer, give it a task, approve its first consequential step.

How Bot works

The turn in user terms: no round limit, a deadline, a stuck guard, wake cues, and what actually reaches you.

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Your bots

Create a bot

The New bot form: name, look and face, description, label, notifications, skills and connectors.

Talking to a bot

Direct messages, suggested asks, questions the bot puts to you, drafts it wants to send, and the status words.

Computer

The Computer rail: the live desktop, taking control, recordings, sleep and wake, and where it runs.

Bot tools

The catalog a bot receives: files and shell, desktop verbs, browser and web, memory, skills, tasks and connected apps.

Approvals and tool policy

Allow, Deny and Always, which tools always ask, the policy tiers, and where pending decisions collect.

Memory

Profile, log and notes: what a bot carries between turns, and how that differs from Chat memory.

Skills

Recipes a bot may follow, the scan that gates them, and how a bot picks one.

Routines

Recurring work on one bot, in your local weekday hours, with pause, resume and run history.

Tasks and subagents

Nested work a bot dispatches inside a turn, the one desktop worker rule, cancelling, and bot-to-bot messages.

Connected apps and secrets

Assign a connected app to one bot, how its tools ask for approval, and the sealed vault behind a secret request.

Inbox

Everything that needs you across every bot you own, with the Working, Pending, Inbox and All filters.

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Collaborate and extend

Channels

Group threads for the bots you own. Create a channel, add members, then address one bot in the composer.

Share a bot

Email invites, the independent copy a recipient gets, and what a shared bot never carries with it.

Teach from a demonstration

Show the bot how to do something on its computer, review the draft, and save it as a skill.

Bot desktop app

A desktop application built around Bot alone, with no Chat or Code sidebar.

Bot troubleshooting

A desktop that will not start, a stream that will not connect, parked steps, and turns that stop early.

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What a bot is

An account can have up to 24 bots. That ceiling is the same for every account.

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Where things are

The Bot sidebar is one narrow column. At the top are four actions: New bot, Routines, Plugins and Approvals. Under the BOTS heading is one row per bot, with its status on the right, and under CHANNELS one row per channel. An account with no bots gets the setup form rather than a list, and an account with no channels reads No channels yet. Open a bot and the pane has tabs for Messages, Computer, Videos and VNC. A bot you can choose to leave Awake, Resting or Hibernating; the other status words you see, such as Starting…, Running, Hibernated, Stopped, Archived and Error, describe what its computer is doing and are reported by Cortex rather than chosen by you.
Several Bot surfaces are drawn in the interface but are not wired up yet, and nothing happens when you use them: multi-bot rooms, importing and exporting a bot pack, duplicating a bot, browsing and downloading workspace files, inbound mail, live voice, the phone-width Companion column and the cost ledger. Each one says so in the product when you open it.

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How it fits with the other products

Chat and Code are two modes of one engine. Bot is a separate loop, which is why per-tool approvals exist here in full and the turn is not capped in rounds. A bot can also open a piece of work in Cortex Code through Open in Code in its conversation. Cortex Design has a page for handing a design task to a bot, and that feature is not available yet.