Skip to main content
Type / in the composer and the command list opens, filtering as you type. Slash commands are how you reach everything the terminal app does that is not a message to the agent: sessions, model and policy, files, MCP servers, diagnostics, your account. A line beginning with / that is not a known command is not an error; it is sent to the agent as an ordinary message. This page lists the built-in commands, grouped the way the in-app list groups them, with their aliases and their arguments. Most of them are also reachable another way, and several are usually reached by their alias rather than their full name: /tasks as bg, /models as m, /shortcuts as keys. At the end are the rules for adding commands of your own to a project.
Arguments in angle brackets are required and arguments in square brackets are optional, exactly as the in-app list shows them. A long list ends with a trailer such as … 87 more — keep typing to filter, so filtering is always the way through it.

​
App, help and display

​
Agents, skills, plugins and hooks

Details are on MCP servers in the CLI, Skills in the CLI, Agents and subagents, Hooks and CLI plugins. /hooks is the exception in this group. It is accepted and its actions are validated, but nothing handles it in this build: it answers Unsupported command in this session and does nothing. Use cortex plugin list instead, and see Hooks for how a hook reaches a session at all.

​
Code and workflow

/spec is on Plan and Spec modes and /goal is on Goals.

​
Account, billing and usage

Signing in from the terminal, including on a machine with no browser, is covered on Sign in to the CLI.

​
Session

/share, /fork and /rewind exist only inside a session. There is no cortex share, cortex fork or cortex rewind command on the command line; the one non-interactive equivalent is the --share flag on cortex run. The commands that do exist outside a session are listed on Command reference.

​
Files and context

Typing @ in the composer opens the file picker directly, which is the quicker path for adding context mid-sentence.

​
Model and policy

/model and /models are the same command, so either spelling works, and m is the alias most people end up using. In the model list, Tab moves to the reasoning-effort controls and back; /effort is an alias that goes straight to them. Switching between Agent, Plan and Ask is Shift+Tab in the composer. What these controls actually permit is on Modes and permissions.

​
MCP

​
Diagnostics

​
Your own commands

A project can carry its own commands. Put a markdown file in .cortex/commands/ in the repository: the file name becomes the command and the body is the prompt it sends, so a command travels with the project and everyone working in it gets the same one.
  • /commands (alias cmds) lists the custom commands it found.
  • /custom-commands [action] (alias cc) manages them.

​
If a command you read about is not there

The list that opens when you type / is the built-in set for the version you are running. Guides, blog posts and older notes sometimes name commands that the current build does not have, and because an unknown / line is sent to the agent as a message, typing one looks like nothing happened except an odd prompt. Three cases worth knowing:
  • Switching mode is Shift+Tab in the composer.
  • Specification mode is /spec.
  • Approval behaviour is /approval, /sandbox and /auto.
  • The model and its reasoning effort are both on the /model form, with Tab between them.
When in doubt, type / and read the list, or open cortex --help outside the app.