Models

Cortex publishes a small catalogue of models, and everything in the product reads from that one list: the model chip in Cortex Chat, the card behind a generated image, the per-model breakdown in your usage, and the Models tab in Settings. The list is fetched from Cortex rather than built into the app, so what you see is what your account can actually use right now. This page is the reference for that catalogue. It covers the models published today, what the Preview badge means, how to read a context window and an output ceiling, how a model gets attached to a conversation, and what happens when the list cannot be loaded or a model cannot be reached. It also names the models that are no longer published, so you can recognise a stale reference when you find one.

​

The models published today

Three rows, and every one of them is a preview. Both chat models support reasoning and tool use. Neither advertises image understanding, which is worth knowing before you attach a picture and expect the model to read it. Cortex 1 Mini is the model a new conversation starts on. Cortex Teutonic-1 is a second preview with a much smaller context window, still under active training.

​

What Preview means

Every published model carries the Preview badge, so the badge is not a way of telling models apart today. It is a maturity signal about the model itself: new, and liable to change. It does not mean the model runs on a different or experimental path, and there is nothing to opt into or out of. Because all three rows are previews, treat output quality, speed and availability as things that can move. The changelog is where a change to the catalogue is announced.

​

Context and output, in user terms

Two numbers describe each chat model, and they answer different questions.

• Context is how much the model can have in front of it for one turn. Everything in the turn counts: the conversation so far, your new message, the text pulled in from attachments, and the results of any tool the model called on the way to answering. When a long conversation starts to feel like it is forgetting the beginning, this is the ceiling you are meeting.
• Maximum output is the longest single answer the model can produce. It is a per-answer ceiling, not a daily budget, and it is not affected by your plan.

Both are counted in tokens, the units a model reads and writes, which do not line up exactly with words or characters. The practical consequence of the difference between the two chat models is large: Cortex 1 Mini has room for a long document and a long conversation around it, while Cortex Teutonic-1 has roughly an eighth of that room.

​

The image model

Cortex-Image-1 is the model behind image generation in Chat. It is a different kind of row from the chat models, and the Chat model picker only lists chat models, so you will never find it there. You reach it by asking Chat for a picture, and the image card names it, on its own or followed by the time the generation took. See Image generation for how to ask for a picture and what you can do with the result, and Limits and quotas for how many images a day each plan allows. Image generation is metered as a quota rather than sold as a paid-plan feature.

​

Which model answers

The model belongs to the conversation, not to your account and not to your plan.

• A new conversation in Chat starts on Cortex 1 Mini.
• A conversation keeps the model it was created with for its whole life. When Cortex Teutonic-1 was added, existing conversations stayed where they were rather than being moved onto it.
• The model picker in Chat lists chat models only. See Models and thinking for the picker, the per-message override and the thinking levels.
• Usage is recorded per product and per model. Settings → Plan & billing → Usage splits it across Cortex Chat, Cortex Code and Cortex Bot, with a PER MODEL view inside the window you choose.

​

No plan gates, and no silent substitution

Two facts about the catalogue matter more than any number in it. No published model is behind a paid plan. Every live row is available from the Free plan up, so you will not meet a locked row, and no plan buys you access to a model that another plan cannot reach. What a plan changes is how many messages you may send, which is covered in Limits and quotas. No model has a configured fallback. Cortex does not quietly answer with a different model from the one you chose. One consequence is that the two chat models fail independently: one preview can be unavailable while the other works normally. Another is that a failure reaches you instead of being absorbed, because a turn makes one attempt rather than looping through hidden retries. When that happens you get an upstream or a capacity code rather than a worse answer from somewhere else. Where a problem document offers a fallback_model, it is offered to you as a button, not applied for you.

​

When the model list will not load

The composer depends on the list, so it tells you plainly rather than sending into the dark. An empty list is not the same as a failed one. If you see “No models are available on your account.”, check that you are signed in to the account you expect, then check System status.

​

Models that are no longer published

Three models were unpublished and are not available. You may still find them named in an old article, an old screenshot or an old conversation. Conversations that had been running on them were moved to Cortex 1 Mini when they were withdrawn, so no conversation is stranded on a model that no longer exists. If a page or a post tells you one of these three is available, it is out of date.

​

Related

• Models and thinking for the Chat model picker, the per-message override and thinking effort.
• Image generation for what Cortex-Image-1 is used for.
• Limits and quotas for the plan windows, which are the real ceiling on your use.
• Errors for the codes a model failure returns, and what retrying fixes.
• How Chat works for what goes into a turn and how the context window is spent.