Astromesh Cortex

Astromesh Cortex is a desktop application for building and operating Astromesh agents. You write an agent in a schema-aware YAML editor or a visual builder, run it in a console that shows every tool call and every model’s cost, and ship it to the runtime you want: one that Cortex installs on your machine, one it provisions on Google Cloud, or a Nexus hub.

Note

v0.21.0. Electron 41, React 19. Agent schema at parity with astromesh core 0.59, plus the via field of core 0.61. Lives in its own repository, monaccode/astromesh-cortex. There is no installer yet: Cortex runs from source (see the Quick Start).

Two modes

A Cortex window works in one of two modes, switched from the status bar or with Ctrl+M.

Mode	Talks to	What you do there
Runtime	An Astromesh runtime: local, remote, or a Cloud Run service	Author agents, RAG pipelines and workflows; run and trace them; install the local runtime; provision GCP; wire WhatsApp
Nexus	A Nexus hub	Publish and version agents per tenant, run them, read consumption, manage API keys, browse the catalog, and (as an operator) manage tariffs and plans

Both modes share the editor area. A tab that belongs to the other mode stays open but disabled until you switch back.

What Cortex does

Area	What you get
Workspaces	A project is a folder with .cortex/workspace.json: connections, environments and UI state, committed with your code
YAML editor	Monaco with validation, completion and hover against the agent, RAG pipeline and workflow schemas; context-aware snippets and a section helper
Visual builder	A canvas with one block per spec section, and inspectors for models with per-role routing, all six tool types, prefetch, knowledge and the Glyph program
Console	Live runs over WebSocket: each tool call and its verdict, the model’s reasoning, writes proposed but not executed, cached tokens, per-model cost, chain links, and the full trace
RAG and workflows	A visual builder for RAG pipelines; a workflow editor, run tracking and the human-in-the-loop approval queue
Local runtime	A one-click install of the runtime with its own Python, plus start, stop, update and health
GCP	A four-step wizard that provisions a Cloud Run runtime through Orbit, and then logs, status, redeploy, an infrastructure map and destroy
Nexus	Publish, version, compare and revert agents, run them with streaming and cancel, consumption by month, agent and invocation, the hub’s catalog, and the operator’s tariffs and plans
Channels	A WhatsApp setup wizard, live channel traffic, and an ngrok or cloudflared tunnel for local webhooks
Terminal	An astromeshctl-style command line over the active runtime’s API

Architecture

flowchart LR
  subgraph cortex["Cortex (Electron)"]
    renderer["Renderer (React)<br/>editors · console · panels"]
    main["Main process<br/>files · processes · secrets · HTTP/WS"]
    renderer -- "typed IPC" --- main
  end
  main --> local["Local runtime<br/>uvicorn :8000"]
  renderer --> remote["Remote / Cloud Run runtime<br/>/v1/*"]
  main --> nexus["Nexus hub<br/>/api/v1/*"]
  main --> orbit["astromeshctl orbit<br/>→ OpenTofu → GCP"]

• The renderer draws everything and calls the runtime API (/v1/*) directly for the active runtime connection.
• The main process does everything privileged: workspace files, installing and running the local runtime, running Orbit, downloading tunnel binaries, every Nexus call (including the run stream, whose handshake needs auth headers), and secrets kept with the operating system’s encryption (safeStorage).

Cortex, Forge and Leia

	Forge	Cortex	Leia
Form	Web app inside a runtime node	Desktop app	Claude Code plugin
Reaches	That node	Any runtime, GCP, any Nexus hub	Runtimes and Nexus, by conversation
Best for	A quick edit on a running node	Building, debugging and operating across environments	Doing the same in natural language

Agents created by any of them, or by the ADK or the CLI, appear in Cortex’s Agents panel, because they all live in the same runtime API.

Next steps

• Quick Start — from source to a running agent
• Workspaces & Layout — the project file, environments, shortcuts
• Authoring Agents — YAML editor, visual builder, tools, RAG, workflows
• Console & Traces — running and debugging
• Runtimes & GCP — the local runtime and Cloud Run
• Nexus Mode — operating agents on a hub
• Channels — WhatsApp, channel activity and the dev tunnel