cortex/docs/setup.md

Setup Guide

This guide gets a local Cortex dev instance running on Windows.

Prerequisites

Install:

• Docker Desktop
• .NET 10 SDK
• PowerShell
• Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code, depending on how you want to work

Docker Desktop must be running before using any deployment script.

First Run

From the repository root:

.\scripts\deploy-all.ps1

This starts:

• PostgreSQL with pgvector
• Hugging Face Text Embeddings Inference
• Cortex MCP server

It also applies EF Core migrations before starting the app.

Verify

Open:

http://localhost:5117/health

Expected result:

{
  "name": "Cortex",
  "status": "ok"
}

The timestamp will vary.

Seed Sample Data

.\scripts\seed-db.ps1

The seed creates a Cortex project and a couple of starter memories.

MCP Endpoint

Use this endpoint from MCP clients:

http://localhost:5117/mcp

Optional Web UI

The Blazor web UI is not required for MCP clients or Visual Studio setup. It is useful for browsing and testing memories manually.

Start it with:

.\scripts\deploy-web.ps1

Open:

http://localhost:5118

The test MCP endpoint is:

http://localhost:5217/mcp

The optional test web UI is:

.\scripts\deploy-test-web.ps1

http://localhost:5218

Stop Services

.\scripts\stop-all.ps1

This stops containers but keeps database and embedding model volumes.

Reset Dev Database

.\scripts\reset-db.ps1 -Force

This deletes only the dev PostgreSQL data volume. It does not delete the embedding model cache.

Environment Defaults

The default local values are shown in .env.example. The Docker Compose files currently define their own values directly, so .env.example is documentation and a future customization starting point.