Interactive mode

The terminal UI — a transcript committed to your scrollback, not an alternate screen.

Starting a session

cortex

cortex runs in your current working directory. It reads the repo, streams the model, dispatches tools, and renders everything into your terminal's own scrollback. When cortex exits, the finished session stays scrollable, searchable and copyable.

How the transcript works

The transcript is committed to your terminal's own scrollback rather than held in an alternate screen. Only work still in flight redraws. This is a deliberate choice: a finished session is something you scroll back through, search, and copy from — including after cortex exits.

Interrupting a turn

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt the running turn. cortex treats Ctrl-C in raw mode as a key, not a kill signal — it cancels the turn cleanly and returns you to the prompt.

The banner

Each session opens with a banner showing the cortex version, the provider and model in use, and the current turn count. The name field from your config appears here too.

Changing the model mid-session

When the model is changed interactively, cortex persists the new provider and model to your user config. The same applies to the pruner. So the next session picks up where you left off.

For the keys and commands available inside a session, see:

• Keyboard reference
• Slash commands