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Exocortex

Quickstart: Consultant

If you bill by the hour and your value depends on remembering what every client said three weeks ago, this is for you.

What you get

  • Morning briefing in Telegram — every day at 07:00, a synthesis of what’s new across clients, what’s overdue, and what’s contradictory
  • Auto-captured Fireflies meeting notes — every Fireflies call lands in your vault, tagged by client, with action items extracted
  • Notion sync for deliverables — your client-facing Notion stays in sync with your private vault; you write once, it appears in both
  • Contradiction alerts — when a client says X on Monday and Y on Friday, Exocortex tells you

Prerequisites

  • Docker (Desktop or engine) on Linux/macOS/Windows
  • A Fireflies account with API access (Pro plan or higher)
  • Optional: a Telegram bot token for morning briefings (free, ~2 min to set up via @BotFather)

Screenshot

Morning briefing in Telegram

Step 1: Start the stack

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/hretheum/exocortex
cd exocortex
cp docker-compose.override.yml.example docker-compose.override.yml
docker compose up -d --build

Wait ~2 minutes for the database and workers to come up. Check health:

Terminal window
curl http://localhost:8000/health

Step 2: Connect Fireflies

Edit .env:

Terminal window
FIREFLIES_API_KEY=fk_your_key_here

Restart the Fireflies worker:

Terminal window
docker compose restart fireflies-sync

The next time you finish a meeting, the transcript and summary will appear in your vault within ~30 minutes.

Step 3: Set up Telegram notifications

  1. Message @BotFather on Telegram, run /newbot, follow the prompts. Save the token it gives you.
  2. Message your new bot once (just say “hi”) so it can DM you.
  3. Get your chat ID: curl https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates and look for "chat":{"id": ...}
  4. Add to .env:
Terminal window
TG_BOT_TOKEN=123456:ABC...
TG_CHAT_ID=987654321
  1. Enable the Telegram profile:
Terminal window
docker compose --profile telegram up -d

Step 4: First night shift

The Night Shift runs at 03:00 UTC by default. To trigger it manually right now:

Terminal window
docker compose exec api python -m exocortex.workers.synthesizer --once
docker compose exec api python -m exocortex.workers.telegram_daily_digest

Within seconds, you’ll get a Telegram message with the morning briefing.

A day in the life

TimeWhat happens
07:00Telegram briefing lands. Skim it on your phone. You see one new contradiction flagged (client said “approved” Friday, “let’s revisit” today).
10:00Standup with Client A. Fireflies records it.
10:30Meeting ends. ~5 min later, the transcript is in your vault under wiki/work/meetings/2026-05-25-client-a-standup.md, tagged client-a. Action items extracted automatically.
14:00Client B call. Same thing.
17:00You glance at wiki/work/clients/client-a.md — auto-compiled dashboard shows the last 5 meetings, open action items, decisions made this month.
FridayGap Radar weekly report drops. You see one client cluster with 4 meetings but no synthesized decisions. Prompt to review.

Next steps