In July 2021 I published a post called Never again forget anything. It was about one iOS Shortcut. I ran it, typed or pasted a thought, and it put the thought where I would find it again: the clipboard into Data Jar, a task into Jira, a line into a work note. One entry point for every idea, so that nothing depended on my memory.
I still work that way. What changed is what sits behind the entry point. The one Shortcut has turned into five things I built, and each of them took over one part of my day.
What each one took over
- slotho holds what I eat and how I feel afterwards. I log food and digestion symptoms, and it tells me which foods turn up before a symptom more often than on the days I did not eat them, from my own log.
- badmintho holds my time off. It keeps the score on my Apple Watch while I play badminton, runs my drills, and saves every match and session to Apple Health.
- FlowMail holds my email. It shows the inbox as a Kanban board, so a message has a status I can see, on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
- pluris holds the things I cannot afford to lose. Passwords, passkeys and API keys go in its vault, and it keeps my contacts tidy.
None of these was planned as part of a system. Each one started the way the Shortcut did: there was something I kept having to remember, and I wanted a place to put it the moment it happened.
Where Cortex comes in
Four apps that each remember one thing still leave a question: where does the work around them live? The release plan, the task that came out of a meeting, the document someone sent, the post announcing a new version.
That is what Cortex is becoming for me. It is a workspace that runs on my own server, where the tools share one memory. Today it holds:
- My products. Every app is a product in Cortex, and it checks the App Store for the version that is actually live.
- My projects and tasks. Each app is a project, and the issues from its code repository arrive as cards on the board.
- My documents and meetings. Notes link to the task or the meeting they came from, and show its current state when I read them again.
- What I publish. The LinkedIn post for a release is drafted and scheduled in the same place as the release itself.
What is real today, and what is next
Today Cortex runs the business side. What I put into the apps stays in the apps: a meal is in slotho, a match is in badmintho, a password is in pluris. Cortex knows about the products, and it holds the work of building them.
Bringing the two closer is where I am taking it, and I will write about that when there is something to show. For now it already does the thing the Shortcut was for: I put something in once, and I find it again where I expect it.
Your turn
Everyone has one part of their day that still lives only in their head. Mine was ideas, in 2021. Tell me which part is yours.
More
- Cortex — the self-hosted workspace, and the tools in it
- Cortex privacy policy — what runs on your server and what leaves it
- All the apps — slotho, badmintho, FlowMail, pluris and formatho
- Never again forget anything — the 2021 post, with the original Shortcut