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Commands

cognitiveOS ships four commands. The CLI is a scaffolding tool, not a runtime. init generates your filesystem once, and your agent plus hooks maintain state from then on.

cognitiveos init     # one-time setup (3 questions)
cognitiveos start    # Mission Control, where you left off, in your terminal
cognitiveos dump "thought"   # capture anything, zero friction
cognitiveos check    # verify everything is wired correctly

init

One-time setup. A 3-question wizard generates your filesystem: the zone folders, STATE.md, and the agent routing files (AGENTS.md + CLAUDE.md).

npx cognitiveos init
  • Atomic. Generation either completes or makes no changes.
  • Never overwrites. Existing files are left untouched; init is additive.
  • Finishes in well under a minute.

start

Prints Mission Control to your terminal: a snapshot of where you left off, read straight from STATE.md. It leads with the ➡ PICK UP line from your Session Handoff (the exact next action), then current focus, blockers, and open loops. Renders in under half a second.

cognitiveos start

Wire it to run automatically on every directory change:

# .zshrc / .bashrc
cd() { builtin cd "$@" && cognitiveos start 2>/dev/null; }
# PowerShell $PROFILE
function cd { Set-Location @args; cognitiveos start 2>$null }

dump

Friction-free capture. Appends a thought to brain-dump/ without breaking your flow. It never fails and never asks follow-up questions.

cognitiveos dump "refactor the auth middleware before shipping"

Capture now, triage later. Getting it out of your head is the whole point.

check

Verifies your cognitiveOS install is wired correctly: a silent-failure detector that runs a set of integrity checks and reports drift.

cognitiveos check          # report problems
cognitiveos check --fix    # repair what it safely can

Run it whenever something feels off, or after editing the generated files by hand.

Next steps

  • The Zones: what each folder means.
  • Hooks: the automation that updates STATE.md for you.