CognOS is
The Cognitive OS for Intelligent Workloads
Just as cognitive systems coordinate execution (act), memory (remember), and perception (perceive), CognOS provides three first-class primitives for intelligent workloads: Orchestration, Knowledge Mesh, and Event Fabric.
Three first-class primitives inspired by cognitive systems — Event Fabric, Agent Orchestration, and Knowledge Mesh — CognOS turns AI agents, workflows, and knowledge into governed, adaptive, production-ready systems with governance built in, not bolted on.
From the earliest attempts to simulate thought with rules and symbols, to today’s neural networks and language models, the pursuit of cognitive systems has been the pursuit of building mirrors of mind. We stand at a threshold where intelligence is no longer confined to people or programs in isolation, but emerges from distributed systems that perceive, remember, reason, and act together. CognOS embodies this idea: not one mind, but a substrate for many; not one architecture, but the operating system upon which new architectures of intelligence can be built.
CognOS Overview
Discover the vision behind CognOS — the first operating system for intelligence workloads. Learn how it unifies perception, memory, and orchestration into a governed cognitive loop.
Raising the Level of Abstraction
See how CognOS raises the level of abstraction from low-level plumbing to declarative cognitive resources — events, claims, workflows, and artifacts — making intelligence composable and governable.
An OS for Cognitive Systems
Understand how CognOS itself is a cognitive system and a substrate for building new ones. Explore how it maps directly onto the cognitive loop: perception, memory, action, and reflection.
CognOS Pillars
Orchestration (Execution Plane)
Process · Workflow · Agent · Task
Execute workflows under budgets and policies with admission pipeline enforcement. Policy → Capability → Gate → Budget → HumanCheckpoint guards ensure governance before execution.
Knowledge Mesh (Memory Plane)
Domain · Graph · Cube · Search
Store structured knowledge with provenance. Entities, claims, and multi-surface queries (Graph, Search, Cube) provide memory for intelligent systems.
Event Fabric (Signal Plane)
Stream · Pipeline · Trigger · Alert
Process streams in real-time with pipelines, triggers, and reactive workflows. Command streams enable event-driven execution across the platform.
Quick Start
# Clone and build
git clone https://github.com/critical-insight-ai/CognOS
cd CognOS
./scripts/build-and-start.ps1
# CognOS runs on https://localhost:7287
# Check health
curl -k https://localhost:7287/modulesCognOS is...
CognOS is agent orchestration.
Replace brittle scripts with durable, declarative workflows where humans, AI agents, and tools act together under budgets and policies.
CognOS is a knowledge mesh.
Turn scattered data into living domains of facts, entities, and claims — multi-representational, contradiction-aware, and explainable.
CognOS is an event fabric.
Perceive signals in real time with pipelines, triggers, and storm brakes — reflexes that keep systems adaptive and safe.
CognOS is open.
Bring your services, models, and tools via APIs or MCP; CognOS weaves them into the cognitive loop.
CognOS is governed.
Policies, human-in-the-loop gates, and provenance are built in so outputs are trusted and auditable.
CognOS is reflective.
Workflows can monitor themselves, detect contradictions, and optimize performance — reflection as a first-class capability.
CognOS is production-ready.
Observability, versioning, and cost control let you move from prototype to platform without rewrites.
Built for Teams that Ship
Product & Ops
Launch features as governed workflows, not tickets. Track cost, performance, and impact with built-in budgets, metrics, and real-time alerts. Smooth by design, scalable in practice.
Developers
Build agent tools in your stack — anything that speaks MCP. Then design workflows, tasks, and agents declaratively in YAML/JSON, or visually with AutoGen Studio. CognOS supports the schemas you already use, so iteration is fast and integration seamless.
Architects
Model domains, workflows, and policies as declarative resources. Deploy anywhere — from laptop to Kubernetes to multi-cloud — with traceability, lifecycle, and governance built in.
Start Building on CognOS
CognOS makes agentic systems governable, scalable, and adaptive. From prototype to production, it’s the distributed OS for your AI future.