Cortex TMS

Documentation Scaffolder & Governance for AI Coding Agents

Validate governance docs. Detect staleness. Maintain structure.

Modern AI agents need governance. Cortex validates that your documentation stays current and well-structured—in CI or locally.

Terminal
$ npx cortex-tms validate
🔍 Documentation Health Check
✅ Mandatory files: All required governance docs present
✅ Structure validation: Proper HOT/WARM/COLD organization
✅ Size limits: Documentation within reasonable bounds
⚠️ Staleness detected: PATTERNS.md unchanged for 45 days
Cortex TMS Dogfooding Results: Quality Over Token Count
Latest Post

Cortex TMS Dogfooding Results: Quality Over Token Count

What we learned building Cortex with Cortex: governance documentation improves code quality, but token savings claims were overstated. Here are the real results and what matters.

Read Article → View All Posts

Consistency

Scaffold governance docs AI agents actually read. PATTERNS.md, CLAUDE.md, ARCHITECTURE.md keep your AI aligned with YOUR standards.

Without governance
With governance docs

Impact: Pattern violations reduced by 80%

Freshness

Detect when governance docs go stale relative to code changes. Git-based staleness detection catches drift before AI agents read outdated docs.

Stale docs undetected
Staleness detected

Impact: Docs stay current with code

Safety

CLAUDE.md governance rules enforce human approval for git operations, prevent scope creep, and keep AI agents aligned with project standards.

Unconstrained AI
Governed AI

Impact: Human oversight enforced

We dogfood everything. This project uses Cortex TMS to build itself—our NEXT-TASKS.md tracks development, our PATTERNS.md guides AI collaboration, and our Guardian CLI reviews every commit. ◢ Cortex TMS Team

One command.
Complete visibility.

The Cortex TMS dashboard gives you a real-time terminal UI showing governance health, documentation freshness, and sprint progress — all without leaving your terminal.

--live mode: auto-refreshes every 5 seconds
Explore the Dashboard docs →
◆ CORTEX TMS DASHBOARD
Project: cortex-tms
2:47:35 PM
✅ GOVERNANCE HEALTH
92/100
overall quality score
Validation: healthy
Guardian: compliant
Stale docs: 1
📅 DOCUMENTATION FRESHNESS
████████████████████████████████████████
95%
Fresh docs: 19/20
Oldest: 23 days
Status: 1 need review
🎯 SPRINT PROGRESS
Current: v4.0.0 - Quality Governance & Staleness Detection
████████████████████████████████████████
90%
✅ Done: 9 🔄 In Progress: 1 📋 Todo: 0
🔥 ACTIVE FILES (6)
CLAUDE.md
NEXT-TASKS.md
docs/core/PATTERNS.md
docs/core/ARCHITECTURE.md
CHANGELOG.md
📁 FILE DISTRIBUTION
🔥 HOT 6 (27%)
████████████████████
~ WARM 12 (55%)
████████████████████
❄️ COLD 4 (18%)
████████████████████
📏 FILE SIZE HEALTH
🟡 NEXT-TASKS.md 172/200 lines (86%)
🟢 docs/core/PATTERNS.md 98/200 lines (49%)
■ VALIDATION STATUS
✅ HEALTHY
Last checked: 2m ago
■ GUARDIAN CODE REVIEW
✅ All Clear
Last review: 5 minutes ago
Run: cortex-tms review <file>
92/100
Governance Health
Spot compliance gaps before they become tech debt
95%
Documentation Freshness
Know exactly which docs need attention and when
--live
Real-Time Monitoring
Auto-refreshing terminal dashboard for continuous insight

Guardian CLI

AI-Powered Semantic Validation

Zod validation for semantic checking
Safe Mode: Read-only analysis (≥80% confidence)
Minimizes false positives and false negatives
Catches pattern drift grep can't detect
Learn more about Guardian →
Guardian Safe Mode
$ npx cortex-tms review src/commands/init.ts --safe
Guardian: Semantic Validation
Pattern compliance verified
Safe Mode: No file operations executed
0 violations found
Feature
Without Cortex
With Cortex TMS
Doc Organization
Manual
Tiered (HOT/WARM/COLD)
Staleness Detection
Manual
Git-based
Doc Governance
Manual
Automated
Pattern Enforcement
Guardian CLI
Version Migration
Auto-migrate
Semantic Validation
Zod schemas

Cortex TMS provides automated governance and quality assurance for AI-assisted development.

Keep AI Agents Aligned

Modern AI agents are powerful but can drift from your standards. Cortex TMS validates that governance docs stay current and well-structured—preventing stale documentation from misleading AI.

Fresh

STALENESS DETECTION

Catches outdated docs

CI/CD

AUTOMATED CHECKS

Validation in GitHub Actions

Patterns

CONSISTENCY

AI follows YOUR standards

Recommended (no installation required):
$ npx cortex-tms@latest init
Or install globally (for frequent use):
$ npm install -g cortex-tms@latest

Tiered Documentation

Organize documentation by access frequency. HOT files (current sprint) are always read, WARM files (architecture) are on-demand, and COLD files (archives) are ignored—keeping AI focused on what matters.

Guardian Validation

AI-powered semantic validation against PATTERNS.md and DOMAIN-LOGIC.md. Guardian catches pattern drift that grep and regex miss. Safe Mode (--safe) shows only high-confidence violations to reduce false positives.

Staleness Detection

Git-based freshness checks detect when governance docs go stale. Configurable thresholds flag docs that haven't been updated while code evolved around them.

Essential Prompts

Project-aware AI prompts guide you through the entire development lifecycle—from init-session to feature implementation to code review. One command copies the right prompt to your clipboard.

Bring Your Own Key

Guardian uses your OpenAI or Anthropic API key—full privacy and control. API keys are automatically sanitized in all error messages and logs. No data leaves your machine except API calls you authorize.

Terminal Dashboard

cortex-tms dashboard launches a full-screen interactive terminal UI. Navigate three views with number keys: governance health score, staleness status, sprint progress, HOT files, and validation results—all in real time with --live mode.

1

Initialize

Run cortex-tms init to scaffold governance documentation—task management, patterns, and AI agent configuration. Everything is preconfigured with best practices.

2

Work with AI

AI agents read your governance docs and follow established patterns. Consistent documentation structure means consistent, high-quality code output.

3

Validate Health

Run cortex-tms validate to check documentation health—staleness detection, structure validation, and size limits. Use --strict in CI to catch issues early.

Ready to Get Started?

Install Cortex TMS and scaffold your first project in under 5 minutes. Join the growing community of teams using governance documentation.