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This quickstart takes you from a signed-in account to a bot that has done a first piece of work on its own desktop, in under ten minutes. It uses the web app, where a bot’s computer runs in the Cloud. You need a Cortex account and a browser. Nothing is installed. If you would rather read about the machinery first, see How Bot works.
1

Sign in and open Bot

Sign in with your Cortex account at cortex.foundation, then choose Cortex Bot in the sidebar. Bot is signed-in only: without an account you see the public product page and a Sign in to Cortex Bot button instead of a bot list.
2

Create a bot

Choose New bot. An account with no bots yet lands on Create your first bot rather than an empty list.Give it a Name of 1 to 40 characters, then pick a Look and a Face. Everything else on the form is optional and can be changed later. Choose Create bot; you see Creating…, then the bot’s first conversation.Its computer is created with it. For the whole form, including descriptions, labels, skills and connected apps, see Create a bot.
3

Open its computer

Switch to the Computer tab.
  • If it reads No computer yet, choose Start computer. The hint says Start a Cloud computer to open a live desktop.
  • If it reads Computer is asleep, choose Wake the computer.
You will see Starting the computer…, then Connecting to the desktop stream…, then the live desktop with Live on the rail. Confirm Runs on reads Cloud.
4

Give it a task

Go back to Messages. A bot with no thread yet shows {name} is idle. and a row of Suggested asks. Those pills write the composer, they do not start a run, so you can edit one before sending.Type into the composer, which reads Message {name}…, and choose Send.
You will see {name} is writing… and then short bubbles as they arrive. A bot reports in a handful of messages rather than narrating every click, so watch the Computer tab if you want the detail.
5

Approve its first consequential step

When the bot reaches something consequential, a command, a file write, or a click on its desktop, the turn parks and you get a widget that asks Allow {tool}?, naming the tool, with the reason and the arguments it stopped on.
  • Allow runs that exact step and the turn continues from the real result.
  • Deny does not run it, and the bot is told why.
  • Always writes a rule so that tool stops asking on this bot.
Nothing runs while the request sits there. See Approvals and tool policy.
6

Drive the desktop yourself (optional)

On the Computer tab choose Take control to use your own mouse and keyboard; You have control appears while you hold it. Choose Hand back when you are done. If the bot is holding the controls you see {name} is still working.
7

Let it rest

Choose Sleep or Hibernate when you have finished, and the rail reads Off. An idle bot computer is put to sleep for you anyway, and the next task wakes it. To rebuild a computer that has gone wrong, choose Recreate.

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What you will and will not see

A bot’s conversation holds only four kinds of thing: your messages, the bubbles the bot chose to send you, questions it asks you, and requests for a secret. Everything else it produced while working, its own reasoning and its raw tool output, never reaches the conversation. A turn is capped at 8 bubbles, so a bot that has nothing to say says nothing. A turn has no round limit. It ends when the model is finished, when you cancel, when the 15-minute deadline expires, or when the same tool call repeats six times without progress.

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Good first tasks

In the web app a bot’s computer runs on Cloud only. This PC, which needs a paired host on your own machine, and SSH, which uses a saved host and has no live desktop, are options in the Bot desktop app.

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Next steps

Once the first task has landed, the three things most people want next are a schedule, a skill and a connected app. Add a routine from the bot’s Routines panel with Create routine; by default it Runs on weekdays at 9:00 in your local time, unless the prompt says otherwise. Enable a skill from the Skills panel, where each recipe is scanned before it can be turned on. Assign a connected app on the Plugins page and then switch it on for this bot only.