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title Network Ports
description Network ports and transport protocols used by Cortex.
order 7
category reference
lastModified 2025-01-15

Network Ports

Cortex uses minimal network resources. This page documents all transport mechanisms and ports so you can configure firewalls, proxies, or avoid conflicts with other services.

MCP Server (stdio transport)

The MCP server communicates over stdio (stdin/stdout) using JSON-RPC 2.0. It does not open any network port.

When an AI agent launches Cortex (e.g., via cortex serve), the agent writes JSON-RPC requests to Cortex's stdin and reads responses from stdout. This is the standard MCP transport and requires no network configuration.

Because stdio is process-local, there is nothing to expose to the network, no firewall rules to add, and no port conflicts to worry about.

Visualizer HTTP Server

The visualizer serves an interactive web UI (3D graph, dashboard, symbol explorer) over HTTP on localhost.

Setting Value
Default port 9749
Bind address 127.0.0.1 (localhost only)
Protocol HTTP

Enabling the visualizer

The visualizer is disabled by default. Enable it in one of two ways:

Option 1: Standalone mode

cortex viz

Opens the visualizer on port 9749 and launches your browser.

Option 2: Alongside the MCP server

Set ui_enabled = true in .cortex/config.toml (or CORTEX_UI_ENABLED=true as an environment variable), then run:

cortex serve

The visualizer starts on port 9749 in the background while the MCP server runs on stdio.

Changing the port

In standalone mode, use the --port flag:

cortex viz --port 8080

When running via cortex serve, the visualizer currently uses port 9749. To use a different port in serve mode, set the CORTEX_VIZ_PORT environment variable:

CORTEX_VIZ_PORT=8080 cortex serve

Or add it to .cortex/config.toml:

viz_port = 8080

Security note

The visualizer binds to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) by default. It is not accessible from other machines on the network. If you need remote access, place it behind a reverse proxy with appropriate authentication.

Summary

Component Transport Default Port Configurable
MCP Server stdio (stdin/stdout) None (no network) N/A
Visualizer HTTP 9749 Yes (--port flag, CORTEX_VIZ_PORT env, or viz_port in config)

No other network ports are opened by Cortex during normal operation.