Cortex is a Hugo theme for publishing a personal braindump — a linked-note digital garden — that adapts Azlen's Roam-style visual design to the Hugo static site generator.
What is Cortex?
Cortex is a Hugo theme built for a personal braindump, meaning it transforms Markdown notes into a browsable static website with a Roam Research-inspired look. It is currently largely copied from the Roam themes in notes.azlen.me, so it inherits that project's visual style. The theme is open source on GitHub, where it has 79 stars. It is designed for note-taking workflows that rely on backlinks and a clean reading experience.
Key Features
- Hugo static generation — Cortex runs on the Hugo framework, so content is written in Markdown and rendered to a fast static site with no server-side runtime.
- Roam-style design — The theme's appearance is ported from notes.azlen.me, giving it the bullet-outline, node-based aesthetic popularized by Roam Research.
- Search support — Search is built in but requires a
/content/search/_index.mdfile so that the/searchURL resolves; without that file, search will not work. - Braindump structure — The theme is tailored for a braindump, which typically means an organized collection of short, interlinked notes rather than traditional blog posts.
- Open source availability — The theme's repository is public, so you can inspect the code, fork it, or suggest changes.
Who is it for?
- Personal knowledge managers — People who want to publish their Zettelkasten or digital garden as a public website using Hugo.
- Hugo users — Developers already using Hugo who want a Roam-like theme without building one from scratch.
- Roam Research refugees — Users who like the Roam outline aesthetic but prefer a static, self-hosted publishing pipeline.
What can you do with Cortex?
- Publish a braindump: Turn a folder of Markdown notes into a public site that mirrors the structure of your thinking.
- Add full-text search: Create the required search index file to let visitors quickly find notes across your collection.
- Customize the theme: Because it's a Hugo theme, you can override templates, add your own CSS, and extend it to fit your personal site.
How does Cortex work?
Cortex works like any Hugo theme: you add it to your Hugo site's themes directory, configure it in your site config, and write content in Markdown under content/. For search to function, you must create a file at content/search/_index.md so that /search becomes a valid URL; otherwise the search page will not appear.
