Identity

The Identity step in the first-run wizard is where you make the agent yours. It captures three things — your agent's name, its personality, and an optional user profile — and writes them as one batched payload to the agent block of your config.

The step has three sub-stages with a short fade between them: Naming → Personality → Profile.

Sub-stage A: Naming

Greeting prose followed by a single text input.

• The default agent name is Nous, but you can change it to anything you like (1–120 characters).
• The Continue button enables the moment the field is non-empty.
• There is no Skip on this sub-stage. Every agent has a name.
• The name input receives focus when the sub-stage renders, so you can start typing right away.

When you submit, the sub-stage advances with a short fade (or instantly, if you have Reduce motion enabled in your OS).

Sub-stage B: Personality

Personality controls how Nous talks to you and writes for you. There are two ways to configure it: pick a preset, or open Advanced Options to set individual trait axes.

Presets

Four presets ship with Nous, in this order:

Each preset is a label-and-description card. Click one to select it; selection updates with aria-checked so it is keyboard- and screen-reader-friendly.

Advanced Options

Click Advanced Options to expand the per-axis override panel. There are five trait axes:

Each axis renders one labeled radio group. Pick a value to override the preset's default on that axis. Overrides compose on top of the preset — if you don't override an axis, the preset's value for that axis applies.

Continue and Skip

• Continue advances to Profile with personality: { preset } if you have no overrides, or personality: { preset, overrides } if you opened Advanced Options and changed at least one axis.
• Skip advances to Profile with personality: { preset: 'balanced' } exactly — no overrides key. This matches the typed default the agent-block readers return when the agent.personality block is absent, so the production prompt path is byte-identical to pre-personality Nous (the regression-parity invariant from SP 1.3).

Sub-stage C: Profile

A short prompt, a security disclosure, and four optional form fields.

Security disclosure

Above the form fields is a short note that says, in three points:

1. Stored locally. Profile data lives in your local config file (nous-config.json5) and nowhere else.
2. Used to personalize. Nous reads it to tailor responses to you.
3. Never sent externally without an explicit action on your part. No background telemetry, no automatic uploads.

The disclosure renders as a role="note" region with data-testid="identity-security-disclosure" for screen readers and tests.

Form fields

All four fields are optional:

Every field is plain text or a single-select. None of them are required.

Submit and Skip

• Submit sends the full identity payload — { name, personality, profile } — through the firstRun.writeIdentity tRPC mutation. On success, the wizard advances to the next step (ollama-setup). On failure, the error message renders in place and the sub-stage stays open so you can correct or retry.
• Skip sends the same shape with profile: {} (an empty object). The agent operates without personalization context, exactly as if no profile were ever recorded.

Backend completion of the agent_identity step is recorded only when Sub-stage C completes — submit or skip. Submitting the name on Sub-stage A or the personality on Sub-stage B does not mark the step complete on its own.

Reduced motion

Sub-stage transitions normally cross-fade. When your OS has Reduce motion enabled (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce), the fade is suppressed and sub-stage swaps happen instantly. Forward navigation, focus management, and form submission are unaffected — only the visual transition changes.

Back navigation

Press the wizard's outer Back button at any sub-stage to return to Welcome. The Identity step does not have its own internal back navigation between sub-stages — back from A, B, or C lands you at Welcome the same way back from any other top-level step would. If you re-enter Identity later in the same session, the internal sub-stage cursor restarts at Sub-stage A, but any values you already typed — your agent's name, your personality preset (with any advanced overrides and the advanced-options open/closed state), and your profile fields — are preserved and re-render in the form so you can pick up where you left off. A full wizard reset via firstRun.resetWizard clears the draft as well as the persisted config.

Hand-editing the agent block

If you'd rather edit nous-config.json5 directly, the agent block schema is documented at Configuration Schema § Agent. The four sub-fields (name, personality, welcomeMessageSent, profile) follow the same Zod schema the wizard submits to. Hand-editors should be aware that wizard-driven writes emit JSON (not JSON5) and strip any comments — see the JSON5 caveat in the schema reference.

Resetting the wizard

If you want to start over — say, to reconsider the personality preset or the agent name — use the firstRun.resetWizard tRPC mutation. It clears the entire agent block while leaving providers and modelRoleAssignments untouched, then resets wizard state so the wizard restarts from Welcome on the next launch. After reset, the agent-block readers return their typed defaults ("Nous", { preset: "balanced" }, {}, false). See tRPC Procedures § firstRun.

Related references

• First Run — the wizard flow at a glance.
• Configuration Schema § Agent — the on-disk schema and read-time defaults.
• tRPC Procedures § firstRun — firstRun.writeIdentity and firstRun.resetWizard shapes.