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Cortex

Topic files

The 10-file context library every agent reads before answering.

The 10-file standard library

Every product in your workspace ships with 10 topic files. They are markdown documents, each scoped to one concern. Agents read the right subset before every answer.

  • Vision (vision) — Why this company exists; the 3-year bet; non-goals.
  • Go-to-market (gtm) — ICP, channels, sales motion, pricing rationale, win/loss patterns.
  • Finance (finance) — Plan vs actuals, runway, unit economics, GST + currency rules.
  • Tech (tech) — Architecture, stack, build/test/deploy, what is load-bearing.
  • Operations (ops) — On-call, runbooks, deploy cadence, support SLAs.
  • Security (security) — Threat model, controls, vendors, incident response.
  • Data & AI (data-and-ai) — Data flows, model choices, retention, AI ethics policy.
  • Brand (brand) — Taglines, voice, visual identity, asset hierarchy.
  • Legal & compliance (legal) — Entity structure, contracts, DPDP/GDPR posture, legal calendar.
  • Growth (growth) — Funnel, retention, expansion plays, experiment log.

Editing

Open Library → Products → <product> → Topics. Click a topic, write in markdown, save. There is no draft/publish split — every edit is the new authoritative version, but old versions remain readable in the change-log tab.

Topic files are tenant-scoped and product-scoped. They never leak across either boundary.

Variants beyond the 10-file standard

Services-engagement tenants use 11 files (10 standard + productisation) with gtm replaced by engagement. Properties (corporate non-revenue infrastructure like a marketing site) use a site-specific 10-file set covering content, SEO, hosting, brand, etc.

Writing style that agents handle well

Cortex agents read your topic files the same way a new chief-of-staff would. The patterns that work:

  • Front-load the load-bearing facts. Numbers, deadlines, constraints, deltas vs last quarter.
  • Be specific. “Pricing was raised 12% in Mar-2026, churn rose 1.4pp” beats “recently we changed pricing”.
  • Mark decisions, not opinions. “Decision: drop the EU launch from Q3” vs “we are thinking about EU”.
  • Link to memos. When a topic file references a past decision, hyperlink the memo.
  • Date everything. Topic files decay; absolute dates beat “recently” or “last quarter”.

What NOT to put in topic files

Don’t store secrets — API keys, customer PII, raw credentials. Topic files are not secret stores. Use tenant_settings for BYO Anthropic keys (encrypted) and your own secrets manager for everything else.