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Feature Request: Global Defaults with Per-Project Overrides #58
Description
Currently, Mode, Agent, Model, Effort, and Turns must be configured manually for each project.
It would be useful to support global default values that are automatically applied to all projects, while still allowing project-specific overrides when needed.
Use Case
Example global configuration:
defaults:
mode: Task
agent: Single
model: Opus
effort: Auto
turns: 5Any new project would automatically inherit these values.
For a specific project, only the settings that need to differ would be overridden:
project:
model: Sonnet
turns: 10Effective configuration:
mode: Task # inherited
agent: Single # inherited
model: Sonnet # overridden
effort: Auto # inherited
turns: 10 # overriddenBenefits
- Avoid reconfiguring the same settings for every project.
- Ensure consistency across projects.
- Allow project-specific tuning when necessary.
- Improve workflow for users who primarily work with the same Mode, Agent, and Model combination.
Suggested UI
- Add a Global Defaults section in Settings.
- Apply defaults automatically to newly created projects.
- Allow projects to override any setting.
- Add a Reset to Defaults button at project level.
- Visually indicate overridden values (badge, icon, tooltip, different color, etc.).
Example
Many users always work with:
- Mode: Task
- Agent: Single
- Model: Opus
- Effort: Auto
- Turns: 5
Today, these values must be manually selected every time a project is created or opened.
With global defaults, projects would start with the preferred configuration automatically, while retaining the flexibility to override specific settings when needed.
Activity
feat: global new-chat defaults with per-project overrides (#58) (#62)
Lexus2016 commentedon Aug 23, 2026
Shipped in #62 (
a696098).The chain —
project override > global default (config.json) > BUILTIN, resolved by a new pure modulechat-defaults.js. The five dials are Mode, Agent, Model, Effort and Turns.All five asks are covered:
section: 'defaults'), so the existing generic form renders them with source badges and a per-row Reset.newTab().PUT /api/projects/:id/defaults.The per-project link is deliberately sparse: a project stores only the dials it pinned, so an unpinned dial keeps following the global when the global changes. A full five-key snapshot would have frozen each project at whatever the global happened to be the day it was created.
BUILTINis the pre-#58 behaviour verbatim, so an install that never opens the settings form behaves exactly as before. An existing chat is never re-seeded — it carries its own mode/model in SQLite.The diff went through an independent cross-provider review before merge, which caught a real precedence bug: the two config files were spread together raw, so a local empty value could mask a valid global one and fall through to the built-in instead of to the global. Fixed in the second commit, along with unifying the
turnscoercion between the settings form and the resolver.Tests:
test/chat-defaults.test.js(53 assertions, pure resolver) andtest/chat-defaults-api.test.js(51 assertions, real server with both config layers on disk). Full suite: 63 files, 1858 assertions, CI green.chore: release 7.7.0 — the #58 chain reaches the server, not just the…
Merge #81: a chat remembers its turn budget and effort