Updated Oct 8, 2026cornelius/main@2db0ed9

Cornelius/Using Cornelius

Using Cornelius

Capture, connect, create, discover, research, evolve. The core workflows, with the prompts that start them.

Cornelius ships pre-seeded with ~1,000 decision-science notes, so every workflow below works on a fresh clone. Not sure where to begin? Run /start-here— an orientation to Cornelius, its core capabilities, and main use cases.

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I Let Cornelius Analyze the Hantavirus Outbreak

May 2026

I Gave My AI Three Years of My Notes. Then I Interviewed It.

May 2026

Think with it: advise and decide

/advise — advice grounded in your own frameworks

Extracts search terms from your problem, runs parallel knowledge-base queries, and synthesizes advice grounded in your own frameworks, with citations.

/advise how should I structure pricing for a new consulting offer?

/decide — decisions, not just advice

When the question is “X or Y?”, “go/no-go”, or “is it worth it”, /decide expands the real option set (status quo, defer, pilot, hybrids), classifies the decision (reversible or one-way door, one-shot or repeated, ruin exposure, risk vs radical uncertainty), applies the matching rule (ergodic filter first, then expected value, robustness / minimax regret, or value of information), and closes with tripwires. A recommendation with no named rule is advice wearing a costume.

/decide hire a second engineer now, or wait until Q2?

Use /decide when options or stakes are on the table; use /advise or /think-about-it for open exploration. Both /advise and /decide run the shared reasoning checks before concluding.

Stress-test and explore

•/dialectic <question> — two sub-agents argue fully committed positions while the orchestrator analyzes the structure of the contradiction and synthesizes.

•/think-about-it <topic> — considers a topic through successive distinct knowledge-base lenses, one perspective pass per run.

•/talk — conversational partner mode, for open-ended brainstorming with your second brain.

Find it: recall and connections

•/quick-search <query> — fastest lookup: top hits with excerpts.

•/search-vault <query> — quick semantic + keyword search.

•/recall <topic> — 3-layer semantic search with spreading activation.

•/find-connections <note> — map the conceptual network around a note or topic.

•/auto-discovery — autonomous cross-domain connection discovery.

•/integrate-recent-notes — connect notes from the last 14 days to the knowledge base.

/recall how does dopamine relate to decision making
/find-connections "Dopamine drives motivation, not pleasure"

Capture it: your voice, kept separate

Cornelius distinguishes your original thinking from borrowed ideas. Your content and external content go through different extractors and land in different folders.

•/extract-insights <file> — insights from your content: conversations, transcripts, notes.

•/extract-document-insights <file> — insights from external documents: papers, books, articles.

•/ingest-source <file or url> — one entry point for a single book, paper, document, or video: prepares it, extracts against the live index, refreshes the index, auto-links, and writes a changelog.

•/insight-interview <topic> — a KB-grounded Socratic dialogue: it searches your notes on the topic, then asks one question at a time to surface and sharpen your thinking, and saves the result as notes.

•/graduate-insights — promote drafts to permanent notes using Zettelkasten criteria.

Plain requests work too:

Help me create a permanent note about [idea] with proper formatting

Please launch the insight-extractor agent to process [[Book Title - Source Note]]

A good permanent note is atomic, in your own words, and linked:

---
created: 2025-10-27
tags: [decision-making, cognitive-bias]
type: permanent
---

# Confirmation bias reinforces existing beliefs

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, interpret, and remember
information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs ...

**Source**: [[Thinking Fast and Slow - Book Notes]]

**Related concepts**:
- [[Belief is a way to deal with uncertainty]]
- [[Identity is built on beliefs]]

Grow it: research

•/deep-research <topic> — an autonomous pipeline that discovers, extracts, and integrates research into the knowledge base, with an optional insight-interview step to capture your own angles before connection discovery.

•/learn-new-things [topic] — a full research cycle with git branching.

•/get-youtube-transcript <url> — pull a video's transcript for processing.

Use it: write

•/create-article <topic> — long-form articles from your insights, with tone-of-voice and structure guides.

•/get-perspective-on <topic> — extract your unique perspective on a topic.

•/synthesize-insights — combine insights into a coherent narrative.

•/create-explanatory-image — generate an explanatory diagram.

Let it think: autonomous loops

Seed open questions with /manage-thinking-topics and configure what to watch with /manage-watching-domains. On a schedule, /domain-watch scans for signals and activates topics, and /incubation-loopworks them with rotating analytical moves. When a topic converges, you crystallize it — the conclusion stops at your endorsement. This is what running on your own Trinity is for.

Two worked routines

Processing a book

•1. While reading — highlight, and take fleeting notes in the inbox. Don't organize yet.

•2. Source note — metadata, core thesis, key concepts, quotes, initial connections.

•3. Extract permanent notes — typically 10–30 atomic notes per book, by hand or with the insight-extractor.

•4. Discover connections — /find-connections on each new note; add the strong links.

•5. Update MOCs — create a new Map of Content once a theme has 15+ notes.

•6. Review the changelog — note emergent patterns and synthesis opportunities.

•7. Synthesize — when patterns emerge, write the article or framework.

Full integration takes 6–10 hours by hand; with the agents, 3–5.

Weekly discovery session (1 hour)

•Review recent notes (10 min) — /search-vault recent notes

•Targeted connection finding (20 min) — /find-connections on each major new note

•Update MOCs (15 min)

•Review last week's changelog (10 min)

•Document the session (5 min)

Once a month, swap targeted finding for auto-discovery (“Please launch the auto-discovery agent”) for serendipitous cross-domain finds. More templates — source notes, MOCs, changelogs, output — in EXAMPLES.md.

Principles

•Atomic notes — one idea per note, well-linked

•Your words — not copy-paste from sources

•Rich links — connect everything with [[wiki-links]]

•Regular discovery — run the connection finder and auto-discovery

•Active synthesis — create content from your connections

Every skill is in the skills catalog.

Getting Started Skills