Configuring agents
After creating an agent from a preset, you can customise its model, permissions, tool access and behaviour. Right-click any agent in the sidebar and select Reconfigure to open the configuration modal.
Model and Provider Selection
By default, agents use the model set in your global settings. You can override both the provider and model per agent.
The model dropdown shows all models from your configured providers, grouped by provider family. Each entry displays capability indicators:
| Indicator | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Context window | Maximum token capacity (e.g. 200K, 1M) |
| Tool support | Whether the model can use tools (Read, Edit, Bash, etc.) |
| Vision support | Whether the model accepts image input |
Ironspire ships with static model registries for seven provider families (Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek, xAI Grok, AWS Bedrock). Ollama models are discovered at runtime. Custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints can be added in Settings > Providers.
See the model registry for the full list of supported models and their capabilities.
Effort Level
Controls how deeply the agent reasons before responding:
| Level | Description |
|---|---|
| Low | Fast, minimal thinking. Best for simple tasks. |
| Medium | Balanced reasoning and speed. |
| High | Deep reasoning. Best for complex tasks. (Default) |
Lower effort is faster and cheaper. Use Low for straightforward tasks like formatting or simple lookups, and High for architecture decisions or debugging.
Permission Mode
Controls whether the agent asks before using risky tools:
- Normal (Safe): the agent prompts for permission on risky actions like file writes and shell commands. This is the default.
- Bypass Permissions (Caution): the agent uses tools without asking. Use this only for trusted, well-understood workflows.
Bypass Permissions lets the agent modify files, run commands and make changes without confirmation. Make sure you understand what the agent will do before enabling this.
Tool Access
You can enable or disable individual tools per agent:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Read | Read file contents |
| Edit | Modify existing files |
| Write | Create new files |
| Glob | Search for files by pattern |
| Grep | Search file contents |
| Bash | Run shell commands |
| WebSearch | Search the web |
| WebFetch | Fetch content from URLs |
Disabling a tool removes it from the agent entirely. This is useful for restricting agents to read-only access or preventing shell commands.
Docker Sandboxing
You can run individual agents inside a Docker container for additional isolation. Toggle Docker sandbox in the agent configuration modal to enable it.
When sandboxing is active, the agent's file system access and shell commands run inside a container rather than directly on your host machine. Docker Desktop must be installed and running.
See the Docker sandboxing guide for setup instructions and configuration options.
Compaction Override
If auto-compaction is enabled globally, you can override the settings for a specific agent:
- Context threshold (60-90%): when to trigger compaction
- Preserved turns (2-6): how many recent exchanges to keep
This lets you give a long-running agent more aggressive compaction while keeping short-task agents at default settings.
Permission and tool changes take effect after restarting the agent session.