Configure Settings

Open Settings from the title bar. Settings is organized into focused areas and saves changes through the application state. Some controls are supplied by the daemon or launch environment; those controls show their effective source and can be locked when a CLI flag or environment variable takes precedence.

Workbench, notifications, and transcription

Workbench contains Appearance and Desktop options, including theme and desktop-specific behavior. Notifications separates general notification delivery from sounds. Shortcuts shows the current fixed keyboard bindings; bindings are not currently remappable.

Transcription configures the speech-to-text model and context used by voice input. Voice transcription still requires an OpenAI Codex OAuth subscription connection. The default gpt-4o-transcribe model preserves the existing behavior; gpt-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-transcribe are also selectable. Nerve sends expected languages and custom vocabulary as structured hints for gpt-transcribe, and as prompt context for the GPT-4o transcription models.

Nerve accesses transcription through ChatGPT’s subscription endpoint rather than the public OpenAI Audio API. That endpoint is undocumented, so model availability can depend on the connected account. Vocabulary is advisory and may bias a transcript; include only relevant names, acronyms, and preferred spellings.

Models and agents

Scoped Models controls the models shown in conversation pickers. An empty scope keeps all authenticated models available.
Agents → Defaults sets the default mode, permission, model, thinking level, approval behavior, and whether new agents use the last selections.
Agents → Compaction controls automatic conversation compaction, profile, trigger threshold, and retained recent context.
Agents → Explore agent configures the separate model and thinking level used for read-only Explore work.

Model availability depends on authentication and provider metadata. Changes to defaults affect new agents; changes made during an active run apply to a later provider request where noted by the UI.

Suggestions, tools, and skills

Suggestions manages reusable prompt chips and their trust settings. Tools has separate Built-in and Integrations sections. Built-in controls include tool enablement, background-task behavior, Python runtime settings, and image explanation. Integration cards appear only when the corresponding module is available and can manage enablement and credentials.

Skills lists discovered user and project resources and lets you enable or disable them without deleting their source files. Tool and skill changes apply to subsequent agent runs.

Storage

Storage shows an ownership and retention breakdown of readable files under NERVE_HOME and provides cancellable cleanup. It distinguishes the authoritative database at data/nerve.sqlite, the rebuildable query cache at cache/query-cache.sqlite, and other disposable cache data. Depending on the selected targets, cleanup can remove old conversations and logs, Explore reports, crash and Node reports, non-query cache and temporary data, or rebuild the query cache from canonical records. Cleanup is asynchronous and reports progress; it never treats the canonical database, migrations, or backups as cleanup targets.

System

System groups:

Network — remote connections, bind host, daemon ports, and Mobile HTTPS.
Diagnostics — application logging, performance sampling, log level, retention, and buffered records.
Daemon — server lifecycle and capability-related controls.
Desktop rendering — desktop rendering behavior.
Launch context — information about how the application was started.
System information — versions and runtime details.

Network, daemon, and diagnostic changes may require a restart. CLI and environment settings take precedence over saved Settings values, and Nerve marks those effective values as locked. Do not put API keys or proxy credentials in shared configuration files.