Configuration

The Configuration panel lets you manage Cortex tier, provider credentials, model selections, and runtime health.

Both the web and desktop hosts use the same shared-server bootstrap. When you change provider keys or model selections here, the runtime behavior is the same in both surfaces.

Cortex Tier

The Cortex (Prefrontal Cortex) tier controls how much oversight Nous applies. Tiers 0–5; higher tiers enable more reflection, memory gating, and tool authorization. See Cortex Mode Capability Matrix.

Provider Keys

Nous currently supports vault-backed API-key setup for:

• Anthropic
• OpenAI

Saving a key does three things immediately:

• Stores the secret in the credential vault instead of the plain-text config file
• Registers the matching remote provider in the active runtime
• Adds that provider's cloud models to the available-model list without requiring a restart

Deleting a key removes that provider from active routing and from the cloud-model list. If no cloud providers remain, Nous falls back to local-only routing behavior.

The key-test action can validate either:

• A newly pasted key
• The already-stored vault key when you leave the key field empty

Available Models

The model picker combines:

• Local Ollama models detected from the running Ollama instance
• Cloud models discovered dynamically from the Anthropic and OpenAI /v1/models APIs

Cloud model lists are fetched live when you open the configuration panel. Successful responses are cached in-memory for 5 minutes to avoid redundant API calls. When a provider API is unreachable or returns an error, the picker falls back to a minimal static model list marked as stale.

Providers without a stored API key are skipped silently — no error is shown and no API call is attempted.

OpenAI models are filtered to chat-capable families (gpt-4, o-series) on a best-effort basis. Anthropic models are returned as-is from the API.

Saved cloud keys are restored on startup, so configured cloud models should reappear automatically after restart.

Model Assignments

Assign model roles to providers. For example, the reasoner role might be fulfilled by Ollama, OpenAI, or Anthropic. The router uses these assignments to route requests.

When you save a model selection, Nous applies the change immediately — the in-memory provider configuration and reasoner assignment are updated at runtime without requiring a restart. Invalid model specs are rejected gracefully without corrupting the active provider config.

Principal and System model selections are saved separately and restored on startup. When a saved cloud selection is restored, Nous automatically moves out of a strict local-only profile so the remote provider can be routed without hand-editing config.

System Health

The health check shows:

• Storage — Document store status
• Ollama — Local model availability (if configured)
• Configured providers — Which cloud providers currently have stored credentials
• Credential vault — Whether vault-backed provider secret lookups are healthy

When Ollama is not running, the Ollama component shows "unhealthy". Start Ollama to resolve.