On your first sign-in a Personal Workspace is created for you automatically — there is no naming step. The welcome screen appears right away while the workspace finishes provisioning in the background. You can create additional workspaces later and give them a name. Uploaded data lands in your
default_dataset.Choose how to start
Onboarding opens with How do you want to start? and offers three paths:Claude Code
Connect your Claude Code agent to Cognee Cloud as a memory layer.
Codex
Connect your Codex agent to Cognee Cloud as a memory layer.
Company Brain
Upload your own data and build a searchable knowledge graph.
Company Brain flow
If you choose Company Brain, onboarding guides you through three steps.1
Connect your data
Drag files into the drop zone, click to browse, or paste text content directly. Supported formats: PDF, CSV, TXT, Markdown, and JSON.
2
Building your memory
Cognee processes your data automatically: Setting up workspace → Uploading files → Building knowledge graph. This runs the same pipeline as the
cognify operation. Processing time depends on the volume of data.Agent flow (Claude Code / Codex)
If you choose Claude Code or Codex, onboarding helps you wire your agent into Cognee Cloud.1
Open your terminal
The panel opens with Connect Claude Code (or Codex) and the reminder “Run this setup in your Terminal — not inside Claude Code.” Everything here is run from your own shell, not from inside the agent.
2
Copy and run
Onboarding gives you a single block to paste: it writes your
COGNEE_BASE_URL and COGNEE_API_KEY to ~/.cognee/.env — the file both the Claude Code and the Codex plugin read at session start — and registers and installs the plugin in the same paste. Because the credentials live in a file rather than the shell’s environment, they survive closing the terminal, and re-running the block replaces the old values instead of stacking duplicates.Use the Mac / Windows toggle at the top right of the panel to pick your shell — on Windows the block comes out as PowerShell (New-Item + Set-Content, with icacls locking the file to your user) and the step above it tells you to open PowerShell rather than Terminal. The same toggle sits inside the dashboard’s connect modals and the Integrations page’s setup modals; see Mac / Windows for everything it rewrites. For cmd.exe, or to set the credentials by hand, see the Claude Code or Codex integration pages.3
Start your agent
Run
claude (or codex). In Claude Code you should now see Cognee in the status bar; with Codex, memory connects automatically from here.4
Continue to the dashboard
Click Continue. It is always enabled — onboarding does not wait to detect agent activity before letting you through. Back returns to the agent picker, and Set up later skips the whole flow.
Agent not recalling anything? Confirm
~/.cognee/.env exists and contains both COGNEE_BASE_URL and COGNEE_API_KEY, and that you started the agent after writing it. Then see “Debugging & Resuming Sessions” in the full guide: Claude Code · Codex.You can skip the onboarding at any point and return to it later. All progress is preserved.
Next steps
Overview
Overview of your workspace, stats, and quick actions.
Open Brains
Manage your data and knowledge graphs.
Connect an agent
Use Cognee as memory for your agent.
Cloud functionality
Explore the full API surface available in Cognee Cloud.