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 override
By default, agents use the model set in your global settings. You can override this per agent:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| System Default | Uses the model from Settings (CLI or API config) |
| Sonnet 4.5 | Fast and capable, good balance of speed and quality |
| Haiku 4.5 | Fastest and most affordable, good for simple tasks |
| Opus 4.6 | Most capable, best for complex reasoning |
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.
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.