Configuration & environment variables.

Required

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — Claude API key. Required for the default claude backend. Get it free at console.anthropic.com.

Launch flags

Set at launch, equivalent to matching :command shortcuts:

$ aish --backend local      # offline inference (Qwen3-1.7B, ~4 GB)
$ aish --mode paranoid      # confirm every tool call
$ aish --mode careful       # confirm writes only
$ aish -c "who is alan turing"   # one-shot command, then exit

:mode <paranoid|careful|normal|yolo> is the graded safety gate — normal (default) confirms only write/create/delete; paranoid confirms everything; yolo confirms nothing. MCP tools honor the spec's readOnlyHint.

Model & backend

• AISH_MODEL — Default Claude model (e.g. claude-opus-4-6). Overridable live with :model.
• AISH_LOCAL — Select the local inference backend.
• AISH_LOCAL_MODEL / AISH_LOCAL_MODEL_ID — Choose the local GGUF model (e.g. Qwen/Qwen3-4B-GGUF) — no rebuild needed.
• AISH_LOCAL_MODEL_PATH — Path to a local GGUF file instead of the HF cache.
• AISH_LOCAL_N_GPU_LAYERS — Number of model layers to offload to GPU.
• AISH_HF_BASE / AISH_HF_REVISION — Hugging Face download base URL / model revision.

Coordinators & fan-out

• AISH_COORDINATOR — Marks the process as a background coordinator (set internally).
• AISH_COORDINATOR_MAX_ROUNDS — Cap on coordinator loop rounds (loop-guard).
• AISH_COORDINATOR_MAX_FAILED_ATTEMPTS — Failed-attempt ceiling before abandonment.
• AISH_COORDINATOR_FAILED_KEEP — Retain failed coordinator state for inspection.
• AISH_COORDINATOR_FAILED_MAX_AGE_DAYS — Age-out window for kept failed coordinators.
• AISH_AUTO_RESUME_ON_CHILD_COMPLETE — Wake parent session when fanned-out children finish.
• AISH_FANOUT_TIER — Latency tier for fan-out (auto | interactive | batch).

Workers & worktrees

• AISH_WORKER_BELL — Ring terminal bell when a background job finishes (on by default; set to 0/off to disable).
• AISH_WORKER_BELL_CMD — Replace beep with a custom sound command (e.g. paplay …/complete.oga).
• AISH_WORKER_RUNTIME — Worker execution runtime (subprocess vs container).
• AISH_WORKER_CPUS / AISH_WORKER_CPU_SECS — CPU count / CPU-time cap for a worker.
• AISH_WORKER_MEM_MB — Memory ceiling (MB) for a worker.
• AISH_WORKER_PIDS — PID limit for a worker.
• AISH_WORKER_NETWORK — Worker network policy.
• AISH_WORKER_STATE_DIR — Where worker state is persisted.
• AISH_WORKER_RETENTION_DAYS — How long finished worker records are kept.
• AISH_WORKER_TRANSCRIPT_CAP — Cap on captured worker transcript size.
• AISH_DRAIN_TIMEOUT — Grace period to drain in-flight work on shutdown.
• AISH_WORKTREE_DIR — Base directory for coordinator git worktrees.
• AISH_WORKTREE_MAX_AGE_DAYS — Age-out window for stale worktrees.

Alerts

• AISH_ALERT_BELL — Ring the bell when an operator alert (:alert) fires.
• AISH_ALERT_BELL_CMD — Custom sound command for alert fires.

Telemetry & reasoning

All best-effort; none change behavior.

• AISH_TELEMETRY_BATCH_SIZE — Telemetry event batch size before flush.
• AISH_TELEMETRY_FLUSH_SECS — Max seconds between telemetry flushes.
• AISH_TELEMETRY_CACHE_SECS — Telemetry cache TTL.
• AISH_TELEMETRY_UNBUFFERED — Disable telemetry buffering (flush immediately).
• AISH_REASONING_LOG — Path/toggle for the reasoning-quality JSONL log.
• AISH_REASONING_MEMO — Reasoning-memo store toggle.
• AISH_REASONING_MEMO_FORCE_RESCAN — Force a fresh reasoning-memo rescan.
• AISH_REASONING_ROTATE_MB — JSONL rotation threshold (MB).

Updates

• AISH_UPDATE_CHANNEL — Release channel to track (stable / dev).
• AISH_UPDATE_REPO — Override the GitHub repo used by :update.
• AISH_UPDATE_CHECK_TTL — Update-check cache TTL (force a fresh check by lowering it).
• AISH_UPDATE_CHECK_CACHE_PATH — Where the update-check result is cached.
• AISH_RELEASE_TAG — Pin/override the release tag for an update.

Skills & plugins

• AISH_SKILL_REGISTRY — Override the skill registry source for :skill add.
• AISH_SKILL_DEBUG — Verbose skill-matching diagnostics.
• AISH_PLUGIN_ID / AISH_PLUGIN_EVENTS — Plugin identity / event subscription (set in plugin dispatch env).
• AISH_IN_HOOK / AISH_EVENT_TYPE — Set inside a lifecycle-hook invocation.

Session, credentials & integrations

• AISH_PROFILE — Active credentials profile (looked up in the credentials file).
• AISH_PROFILE_BASE — Base for profile resolution.
• AISH_CREDENTIALS_FILE — Path to the credentials file.
• AISH_BASE — Base directory for aish state (defaults under ~/.aish).
• AISH_SESSION_ID — Current session id (set internally).
• AISH_LAUNCH_SESSION_ID / AISH_LAUNCH_SESSION_NAME — Launch session identity.
• AISH_LOGIN_NAME — Login-shell identity override.
• AISH_VERSION_STRING — Overrides the reported version string.
• AISH_TENANT_ID — Tenant scope for MCP/enterprise integrations.
• AISH_GITHUB_API_BASE / AISH_GITHUB_RAW_BASE — Override GitHub API / raw hosts.
• AISH_MCPMARKET_BASE — Base URL for the MCP marketplace.
• AISH_ENV_INJECTION_DISABLED — Disable env injection into tool subprocesses.
• AISH_STARTUP_DIGEST / AISH_TIME_STARTUP — Startup digest / timing instrumentation toggles.