How to Build a Research Monitor in Cortex

Introduction

Researchers have to stay on top of a wide range of sources, signals, and constantly evolving narratives across papers, reports, and news. With the latest AI models, it is now practical to continuously automate the monitoring, filtering, and aggregation of that research surface in a way that is tailored to your specific needs. Cortex gives researchers a place to define the sources they trust, express the research objective, and turn that incoming material into recurring outputs for review and follow-up.

Step 1: Define The Research Surface

Start by choosing the field or topic boundary you want to monitor. Keep the first version narrow enough that signal stays coherent: a subfield, technology area, policy domain, or industry theme is better than a catch-all research bucket.

Outside Cortex, decide where deeper interpretation will live. That might be a shared notes document, an analyst memo workflow, a spreadsheet, or another environment where findings are reviewed and turned into decisions.

Step 2: Build The Cortex Project

Project

Create one project that states the monitoring objective clearly: what counts as a relevant breakthrough, what kinds of sources matter, and what should be ignored as routine noise.

Sources

Start with the highest-signal sources first. Academic and industry workflows often fit a mix of RSS, Web, and API-backed sources. All sources feed into every topic feed — the feed objectives handle the filtering, not the source assignments. Add, remove, or swap sources as your reading evolves.

• Primary research sources for papers, preprints, journals, or publication feeds.
• Industry sources for reports, company research blogs, and analyst coverage.
• Contextual news sources for major announcements or events that change how the research should be interpreted.

{
  "url": "https://rss.arxiv.org/rss/econ",
  "cron": "0 6 * * *"
}

{
  "url": "https://back.nber.org/rss/new.xml",
  "cron": "0 6 * * *"
}

{
  "url": "https://www.nature.com/nature.rss",
  "cron": "0 6 * * *"
}

{
  "url": "https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/feed/",
  "cron": "0 6 * * *"
}

{
  "url": "https://www.sciencedaily.com/rss/science_society/economics.xml",
  "cron": "0 6 * * *"
}

Feeds

Each feed represents a topic area within your research program. All feeds pull from the same sources, but each one filters for different material based on its objective. This is where Cortex does the most useful work — the same paper from NBER or arXiv gets routed to the right topic automatically.

Start with the topics that match your active projects. Add more feeds later as your interests shift or new projects begin.

Digests

Use one briefing digest for the recurring summary and one dataset digest for a durable, structured list of findings or follow-up items. The briefing answers "what changed?" while the dataset helps answer "what should we revisit or compare later?"

Weekly Research Briefing

The briefing runs weekly and produces a narrative summary organized by publication stage: new working papers and preprints, published journal articles, policy reports, and data releases. Within each section, findings are grouped by topic area.

Reading List

The reading list builds a structured table of individual papers and findings. Each row captures enough context to decide whether to read the full paper without opening the source.

Step 3: Use The Outputs Outside Cortex

The briefing is the quick scan. It helps a researcher or operator understand what moved in the topic area without opening every source immediately.

The dataset is the working surface. Review the highest-value findings there, follow links back to the source material when deeper context is needed, and move the strongest items into your external notes, decision memos, or analysis pipeline.

Step 4: How The Full System Works Together

Information flows in from multiple research surfaces, gets filtered against the project objective, and turns into two complementary outputs. Cortex handles the continuous monitoring and synthesis, while your external workflow handles interpretation, writing, citation, and downstream decisions.

That split keeps the guide grounded: Cortex organizes the signal, but the surrounding research process still lives outside the product.