Local-first agent kernel: a durable case file + phase machine (orient → investigate → plan → change → verify → preserve) between an LLM and a specialist tool ecosystem. CLI + MCP server.
**An evidence-guided agent kernel for software-engineering agents.** Cortex is a small, local-first runtime that sits between an LLM and a set of specialist tools. It does not replace the model's planning or coding ability — it supplies the parts models are consistently bad at preserving across long tool-using tasks: