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Getting Started

Welcome to Cognova — a managed AI agent platform powered by Claude. This guide walks you through the basics of setting up your workspace.

Create Your Account

  1. Sign up at cognova.dev/register
  2. Verify your email address
  3. Your default workspace is created automatically

Your First Conversation

When you first log in, your assistant will greet you and walk you through setting up your workspace. This happens right in the chat — no forms or wizards.

During this conversation, your assistant will:

  1. Learn your name and ask what you'd like to call it
  2. Understand your preferences — casual or professional, brief or detailed
  3. Learn about your work — what you're building, your goals
  4. Create a project and set up starter tasks based on what you tell it
  5. Store memories about you and your work for future conversations

By the time you're done, your workspace has real data — a project, tasks, knowledge, and memories — and you've seen your agent use tools in action.

Agent Delegation

Your default assistant automatically gets delegation tools (ask_[name]) for every other enabled agent. This means you can ask your assistant to route requests to specialists without switching agents manually.

For example, if you create a "Code Reviewer" agent and a "SQL Expert" agent, your assistant can call either one when the conversation demands it.

Create Specialist Agents

Your default assistant handles general tasks, but you can create specialist agents for specific domains.

  1. Navigate to Agents in the sidebar
  2. Click New Agent
  3. Give it a name (e.g., "Code Reviewer") and a system prompt describing its role
  4. Choose a model tier:
    • Fast (Haiku) — quick responses, low cost
    • Balanced (Sonnet) — best for most tasks
    • Pro (Opus) — maximum capability
  5. Save — your default assistant can now delegate to it automatically

Add Tools

Tools give agents the ability to take actions — call APIs, reference documentation, or run code in a sandbox.

  1. Go to Tools in the sidebar
  2. Click Create Tool and choose a type (HTTP, Knowledge, or Sandbox)
  3. Configure the tool definition and save
  4. Navigate to your agent's settings and attach the tool

You can also browse and install community tools from the Tool Hub.

Every agent also has built-in tools (tasks, memory, files, code execution, web search) available automatically. See the Custom Tools guide for full details.

Upload Knowledge

Knowledge bases let agents reference your documents when answering questions.

  1. Go to Knowledge in the sidebar
  2. Create or upload files (Markdown, text, code, JSON)
  3. Assign knowledge directories to specific agents in their settings

Agents automatically retrieve relevant content from their knowledge base during conversations — they search your docs before answering, so responses are grounded in your actual information.

Memory

Your agents remember things across conversations. When you share decisions, preferences, facts about your project, or solutions you've found, the agent stores them automatically. In future conversations, it recalls relevant memories to give you better, more personalized responses.

You can view and manage stored memories in the Memories section of the sidebar.

Invite Your Team

Cognova is workspace-based — your whole team shares agents, tools, knowledge, and a credit pool.

  1. Go to Settings > Workspace
  2. Click Invite Member
  3. Choose a role: Owner, Admin, or Member

New members go through a brief introduction with the assistant when they first join — it learns their name and preferences so it can personalize interactions for each team member.

What's Next?