Skip to main content
These are the questions people ask in their first week with Cortex, answered in a sentence or two. Every answer links to the page that covers the subject properly, so treat this as a switchboard rather than a reference. Where the honest answer is “not yet”, it says so. Cortex is in beta, several controls are drawn before they are wired, and this page would be useless if it papered over that.

​
Accounts and access

Not for Cortex Chat. A guest can ask questions straight away, within a message allowance shown above the composer. Cortex Code, Cortex Bot, Cortex Design, the desktop apps and the Cortex CLI all need a signed-in account. See Accounts and sign-in.
Signing in does not navigate away, and the conversation on screen is kept. Guest conversations otherwise live in the browser session only, so sign in before you close the tab if you want to keep them. See Accounts and sign-in.
In the dialog on cortex.foundation, choose Continue with Google, Continue with Apple, Continue with email for a code sent to your address, or Single sign-on (SSO) if your organisation uses one. See Accounts and sign-in.
Two different gates. This space is reserved means you are a guest and these are member surfaces, so sign in or continue in Chat. In closed beta means you are signed in but not yet invited, and only Continue in Chat is offered. See Which product do I need?.
Only if you want to export or delete your data: both actions require an enrolled authenticator app and a recent confirmation. Cortex uses an authenticator app, with no SMS option and no security-key option. See Two-factor authentication.

​
Plans, quotas and billing

Free is 0amonth,Gois0 a month, Go is 8 a month, Plus is $20 a month, and Pro is quoted rather than priced on the page. A guest has its own allowance while signed out. See Plans and quotas.
Two windows are enforced: messages today and messages this month. Every turn charges both, and whichever runs out first is the one that stops you. Tools, reasoning, web search and code runs are not metered on any plan. See Limits and quotas.
A guest gets 100 a day and 500 a month, Free gets 500 a day and 3,000 a month, Go gets 1,000 a day and 8,000 a month, and Plus and Pro have no message ceiling. See Plans and quotas.
No. Each window starts from zero when it rolls over, and a guest allowance does not carry into the Free plan when you sign in. See Plans and quotas.
A Plan limit reached notice saying you have used everything this plan allows in the current window, with a Resets in line and, sometimes, the offer of a model that is still available under the limit. It fails closed rather than quietly degrading the answer. See quota_exceeded.
Not on this deployment. The plan cards are there and comparable, but the action carries a HOLD badge instead of a payment form, and Billing history always reads that there are no invoices yet. See Plans and quotas.

​
Privacy and your data

No. The Improve the model control is off, and it is not available yet in any case, so nothing is sampled for training without it. See Data and privacy.
Yes, from Settings and then Data & privacy, under Your data. Export my data downloads a JSON file with your account details, conversation metadata, memories and Library file metadata. It does not contain message bodies or the file bytes themselves, and it needs an authenticator confirmation. See Data and privacy.
Yes. Delete all data schedules a real erasure of your account, conversations, memories, files, bots and canvases after a 30-day grace period. Signing in again before that runs cancels the request; afterwards nothing can be restored. See Data and privacy.
Standing preferences and facts you share, kept as memory so answers get more personal. You can search, edit and delete individual memories, set how long they are kept, or turn memory off entirely. Temporary chats never read or write memory. See Memory.
Yes. If your browser sends one, optional analytics stay off, the banner confirms the signal was honoured instead of asking again, and the signal wins over an “allow” sent from the page. See Data and privacy.

​
Using the product

Three are public: Cortex 1 Mini, Cortex Teutonic-1, and Cortex-Image-1 for images in Chat. All three are marked preview, and all three are available from the Free plan upwards. No model is behind a paid plan today, and Cortex does not quietly answer with a different model from the one you chose, because no fallback is configured. See Models.
The interface comes in eight languages, chosen under Settings and then General. English is unprefixed and every other language is a URL prefix. Model prompts stay in English and the product names are never translated. See Interface language.
Settings is an overlay, not a page: it opens over Chat, Code or Bot and closing it returns you to exactly where you were. Seven tabs sit in two groups, and the search field at the top of the rail searches rows across every tab. See Settings.
Press ⌘ /, or Ctrl /, for the in-product sheet. The published set is short on purpose. See Keyboard shortcuts.
Check System status. If everything fails at once rather than one action, look there before filing anything.
From inside the product: the Report a bug control beside Settings, or the row in Settings and then General. It needs an account. See Report a bug.

​
Not available yet

Not yet. Cortex is per account today: there are no invitations and no shared workspace, and the role and directory rows in Settings describe an organisation you cannot create yet.
Not yet. The API keys section is reserved rather than live, and create, rotate and revoke stay disabled. See Data and privacy.
Not on this deployment. Both controls are drawn and both say so when you choose them, so an authenticator app is the only second factor today. See Two-factor authentication.
Not yet. Save chat history is on and cannot be changed, and it is marked as coming soon. You can still delete individual chats, or everything, at any time. See Data and privacy.
No, and Cortex does not claim to be. The Compliance section lists each framework’s real status, and product copy never claims a certification until an attestation exists. See Security and privacy.
The events are recorded, but on some deployments the list cannot be read back yet, and it says so rather than showing you an empty table as though nothing happened. See Data and privacy.