config.json Reference

We recently introduced a new configuration format, config.yaml, to replace config.json. See the config.yaml reference and migration guide here.

Below are details for each property that can be set in config.json. The config schema code is found in extensions/vscode/config_schema.json.

All properties at all levels are optional unless explicitly marked required

models

Your chat models are defined here, which are used for Chat, Edit and VS Code actions.

Each model has specific configuration options tailored to its provider and functionality, which can be seen as suggestions while editing the json.

Properties:

• title (required): The title to assign to your model, shown in dropdowns, etc.

• provider (required): The provider of the model, which determines the type and interaction method. Options inclued openai, ollama, xAI, etc., see IntelliJ suggestions.

• model (required): The name of the model, used for prompt template auto-detection. Use AUTODETECT special name to get all available models.

• apiKey: API key required by providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, and xAI.

• apiBase: The base URL of the LLM API.

• contextLength: Maximum context length of the model, typically in tokens (default: 2048).

• maxStopWords: Maximum number of stop words allowed, to avoid API errors with extensive lists.

• template: Chat template to format messages. Auto-detected for most models but can be overridden. See intelliJ suggestions.

• promptTemplates: A mapping of prompt template names (e.g., edit) to template strings. See the Deep Dives section for customization details.

• completionOptions: Model-specific completion options, same format as top-level completionOptions, which they override.

• systemMessage: A system message that will precede responses from the LLM.

• requestOptions: Model-specific HTTP request options, same format as top-level requestOptions, which they override.

• apiType: Specifies the type of API (openai or azure).

• apiVersion: Azure API version (e.g., 2023-07-01-preview).

• engine: Engine for Azure OpenAI requests.

• capabilities: Override auto-detected capabilities:

  • uploadImage: Boolean indicating if the model supports image uploads.
  • tools: Boolean indicating if the model supports tool use.

(AWS Only)

• profile: AWS security profile for authorization.
• modelArn: AWS ARN for imported models (e.g., for bedrockimport provider).
• region: Region where the model is hosted (e.g., us-east-1, eu-central-1).

Example:

config.json

{
  "models": [
    { "title": "Ollama", "provider": "ollama", "model": "AUTODETECT" },
    {
      "model": "gpt-4o",
      "contextLength": 128000,
      "title": "GPT-4o",
      "provider": "openai",
      "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  ]
}

tabAutocompleteModel

Specifies the model or models for tab autocompletion, defaulting to an Ollama instance. This property uses the same format as models. Can be an array of models or an object for one model.

Example

config.json

{
  "tabAutocompleteModel": {
    "title": "My Starcoder",
    "provider": "ollama",
    "model": "starcoder2:3b"
  }
}

tabAutocompleteOptions

Specifies options for tab autocompletion behavior.

Properties:

• disable: If true, disables tab autocomplete (default: false).
• maxPromptTokens: Maximum number of tokens for the prompt (default: 1024).
• debounceDelay: Delay (in ms) before triggering autocomplete (default: 350).
• maxSuffixPercentage: Maximum percentage of prompt for suffix (default: 0.2).
• prefixPercentage: Percentage of input for prefix (default: 0.3).
• template: Template string for autocomplete, using Mustache templating. You can use the {{{ prefix }}}, {{{ suffix }}}, {{{ filename }}}, {{{ reponame }}}, and {{{ language }}} variables.
• onlyMyCode: If true, only includes code within the repository (default: true).

Example

config.json

{
  "tabAutocompleteOptions": {
    "debounceDelay": 500,
    "maxPromptTokens": 1500,
    "disableInFiles": ["*.md"]
  }
}

embeddingsProvider

Embeddings model settings - the model used for @Codebase and @docs.

Properties:

• provider (required): Specifies the embeddings provider, with options including transformers.js, ollama, openai, cohere, gemini, etc
• model: Model name for embeddings.
• apiKey: API key for the provider.
• apiBase: Base URL for API requests.
• requestOptions: Additional HTTP request settings specific to the embeddings provider.
• maxEmbeddingChunkSize: Maximum tokens per document chunk. Minimum is 128 tokens.
• maxEmbeddingBatchSize: Maximum number of chunks per request. Minimum is 1 chunk.

(AWS ONLY)

• region: Specifies the region hosting the model.
• profile: AWS security profile.

Example:

config.json

{
  "embeddingsProvider": {
    "provider": "openai",
    "model": "text-embedding-ada-002",
    "apiKey": "<API_KEY>",
    "maxEmbeddingChunkSize": 256,
    "maxEmbeddingBatchSize": 5
  }
}

completionOptions

Parameters that control the behavior of text generation and completion settings. Top-level completionOptions apply to all models, unless overridden at the model level.

Properties:

• stream: Whether to stream the LLM response. Currently only respected by the anthropic and ollama providers; other providers will always stream (default: true).
• temperature: Controls the randomness of the completion. Higher values result in more diverse outputs.
• topP: The cumulative probability for nucleus sampling. Lower values limit responses to tokens within the top probability mass.
• topK: The maximum number of tokens considered at each step. Limits the generated text to tokens within this probability.
• presencePenalty: Discourages the model from generating tokens that have already appeared in the output.
• frequencyPenalty: Penalizes tokens based on their frequency in the text, reducing repetition.
• mirostat: Enables Mirostat sampling, which controls the perplexity during text generation. Supported by Ollama, LM Studio, and llama.cpp providers (default: 0, where 0 = disabled, 1 = Mirostat, and 2 = Mirostat 2.0).
• stop: An array of stop tokens that, when encountered, will terminate the completion. Allows specifying multiple end conditions.
• maxTokens: The maximum number of tokens to generate in a completion (default: 2048).
• numThreads: The number of threads used during the generation process. Available only for Ollama as num_thread.
• keepAlive: For Ollama, this parameter sets the number of seconds to keep the model loaded after the last request, unloading it from memory if inactive (default: 1800 seconds, or 30 minutes).
• numGpu: For Ollama, this parameter overrides the number of gpu layers that will be used to load the model into VRAM.
• useMmap: For Ollama, this parameter allows the model to be mapped into memory. If disabled can enhance response time on low end devices but will slow down the stream.
• reasoning: Enables thinking/reasoning for Anthropic Claude 3.7+ models.
• reasoningBudgetTokens: Sets budget tokens for thinking/reasoning in Anthropic Claude 3.7+ models.

Example

config.json

{ "completionOptions": { "stream": false, "temperature": 0.5 } }

requestOptions

Default HTTP request options that apply to all models and context providers, unless overridden at the model level.

Properties:

• timeout: Timeout for each request to the LLM (default: 7200 seconds).

• verifySsl: Whether to verify SSL certificates for requests.

• caBundlePath: Path to a custom CA bundle for HTTP requests - path to .pem file (or array of paths)

• proxy: Proxy URL to use for HTTP requests.

• headers: Custom headers for HTTP requests.

• extraBodyProperties: Additional properties to merge with the HTTP request body.

• noProxy: List of hostnames that should bypass the specified proxy.

• clientCertificate: Client certificate for HTTP requests.

  • cert: Path to the client certificate file.
  • key: Path to the client certificate key file.
  • passphrase: Optional passphrase for the client certificate key file.

Example

config.json

{ "requestOptions": { "headers": { "X-Auth-Token": "xxx" } } }

reranker

Configuration for the reranker model used in response ranking.

Properties:

• name (required): Reranker name, e.g., cohere, voyage, llm, huggingface-tei, bedrock

• params:

  • model: Model name
  • apiKey: Api key
  • region: Region (for Bedrock only)

Example

config.json

{
  "reranker": {
    "name": "voyage",
    "params": { "model": "rerank-2", "apiKey": "<VOYAGE_API_KEY>" }
  }
}

docs

List of documentation sites to index.

Properties:

• title (required): Title of the documentation site, displayed in dropdowns, etc.

• startUrl (required): Start page for crawling - usually root or intro page for docs

• maxDepth: Maximum link depth for crawling. Default 4

• favicon: URL for site favicon (default is /favicon.ico from startUrl).

• useLocalCrawling: Skip the default crawler and only crawl using a local crawler.

Example

config.json

"docs": [    {    "title": "Continue",    "startUrl": "https://docs.continue.dev/intro",    "faviconUrl": "https://docs.continue.dev/favicon.ico",  }]

slashCommands

Custom commands initiated by typing ”/” in the sidebar. Commands include predefined functionality or may be user-defined.

Properties:

• name: The command name. Options include “issue”, “share”, “cmd”, “http”, “commit”, and “review”.
• description: Brief description of the command.
• step: (Deprecated) Used for built-in commands; set the name for pre-configured options.
• params: Additional parameters to configure command behavior (command-specific - see code for command)

The following commands are built-in and can be added to config.json to make them visible:

/share

Generate a shareable markdown transcript of your current chat history.

config.json

{
  "slashCommands": [
    {
      "name": "share",
      "description": "Export the current chat session to markdown",
      "params": { "outputDir": "~/.continue/session-transcripts" }
    }
  ]
}

Use the outputDir parameter to specify where you want to the markdown file to be saved.

/cmd

Generate a shell command from natural language and (only in VS Code) automatically paste it into the terminal.

config.json

{
  "slashCommands": [
    { "name": "cmd", "description": "Generate a shell command" }
  ]
}

/commit

Shows the LLM your current git diff and asks it to generate a commit message.

config.json

{
  "slashCommands": [
    {
      "name": "commit",
      "description": "Generate a commit message for the current changes"
    }
  ]
}

/http

Write a custom slash command at your own HTTP endpoint. Set ‘url’ in the params object for the endpoint you have setup. The endpoint should return a sequence of string updates, which will be streamed to the Continue sidebar. See our basic FastAPI example for reference.

config.json

{
  "slashCommands": [
    {
      "name": "http",
      "description": "Does something custom",
      "params": { "url": "<my server endpoint>" }
    }
  ]
}

/issue

Describe the issue you’d like to generate, and Continue will turn into a well-formatted title and body, then give you a link to the draft so you can submit. Make sure to set the URL of the repository you want to generate issues for.

config.json

{
  "slashCommands": [
    {
      "name": "issue",
      "description": "Generate a link to a drafted GitHub issue",
      "params": { "repositoryUrl": "https://github.com/continuedev/continue" }
    }
  ]
}

/onboard

The onboard slash command helps to familiarize yourself with a new project by analyzing the project structure, READMEs, and dependency files. It identifies key folders, explains their purpose, and highlights popular packages used. Additionally, it offers insights into the project’s architecture.

config.json

{
  "slashCommands": [
    {
      "name": "onboard",
      "description": "Familiarize yourself with the codebase"
    }
  ]
}

Example:

config.json

{
  "slashCommands": [
    { "name": "commit", "description": "Generate a commit message" },
    { "name": "share", "description": "Export this session as markdown" },
    { "name": "cmd", "description": "Generate a shell command" }
  ]
}

customCommands

User-defined commands for prompt shortcuts in the sidebar, allowing quick access to common actions.

Properties:

• name: The name of the custom command.
• prompt: Text prompt for the command.
• description: Brief description explaining the command’s function.

Example:

config.json

{
  "customCommands": [
    {
      "name": "test",
      "prompt": "Write a comprehensive set of unit tests for the selected code. It should setup, run tests that check for correctness including important edge cases, and teardown. Ensure that the tests are complete and sophisticated. Give the tests just as chat output, don't edit any file.",
      "description": "Write unit tests for highlighted code"
    }
  ]
}

contextProviders

List of the pre-defined context providers that will show up as options while typing in the chat, and their customization with params.

Properties:

• name: Name of the context provider, e.g. docs or web
• params: A context-provider-specific record of params to configure the context behavior

Example

config.json

{
  "contextProviders": [
    { "name": "code", "params": {} },
    { "name": "docs", "params": {} },
    { "name": "diff", "params": {} },
    { "name": "open", "params": {} }
  ]
}

userToken

An optional token that identifies the user, primarily for authenticated services.

systemMessage

Defines a system message that appears before every response from the language model, providing guidance or context.

experimental

Several experimental config parameters are available, as described below:

experimental:

• defaultContext: Defines the default context for the LLM. Uses the same format as contextProviders but includes an additional query property to specify custom query parameters.=

• modelRoles:

  • inlineEdit: Model title for inline edits.
  • applyCodeBlock: Model title for applying code blocks.
  • repoMapFileSelection: Model title for repo map selections.

• quickActions: Array of custom quick actions

  • title (required): Display title for the quick action.
  • prompt (required): Prompt for quick action.
  • sendToChat: If true, sends result to chat; else inserts in document. Default is false.

• contextMenuPrompts:

  • comment: Prompt for commenting code.
  • docstring: Prompt for adding docstrings.
  • fix: Prompt for fixing code.
  • optimize: Prompt for optimizing code.

• modelContextProtocolServers: See Model Context Protocol

Example

config.json

{
  "experimental": {
    "modelRoles": { "inlineEdit": "Edit Model" },
    "quickActions": [
      {
        "title": "Tags",
        "prompt": "Return a list of any function and class names from the included code block",
        "sendToChat": true
      }
    ],
    "contextMenuPrompts": {
      "fixGrammar": "Fix grammar in the above but allow for typos."
    },
    "modelContextProtocolServers": [
      {
        "transport": {
          "type": "stdio",
          "command": "uvx",
          "args": ["mcp-server-sqlite", "--db-path", "/Users/NAME/test.db"]
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Fully deprecated settings

Some deprecated config.json settings are no longer stored in config and have been moved to be editable through the User Settings Page. If found in config.json, they will be auto-migrated to User Settings and removed from config.json.

• allowAnonymousTelemetry: This value will be migrated to the safest merged value (false if either are false).

• promptPath: This value will override during migration.

• disableIndexing: This value will be migrated to the safest merged value (true if either are true).

• disableSessionTitles/ui.getChatTitles: This value will be migrated to the safest merged value (true if either are true). getChatTitles takes precedence if set to false

• tabAutocompleteOptions

  • useCache: This value will override during migration.
  • disableInFiles: This value will be migrated to the safest merged value (arrays of file matches merged/deduplicated)
  • multilineCompletions: This value will override during migration.

• experimental

  • useChromiumForDocsCrawling: This value will override during migration.
  • readResponseTTS: This value will override during migration.

• ui - all will override during migration

  • codeBlockToolbarPosition
  • fontSize
  • codeWrap
  • displayRawMarkdown
  • showChatScrollbar

  See User Settings Page for more information about each option.