Getting Started

After installation, you can generate the configuration files and directories by simply running:

coyote --info

Then, you need to set up the Coyote vault. On your first run, Coyote walks you through choosing a secrets provider (Local, AWS Secrets Manager, GCP Secret Manager, Azure Key Vault, gopass, or 1Password) and configuring it. See the vault documentation for the full list of providers and configuration details. To get started, you can run:

coyote --list-secrets

Authentication

Each client in your configuration needs authentication (with a few exceptions; e.g. ollama). Most clients use an API key (set via api_key in the config or through the vault). For providers that support OAuth (e.g. Claude Pro/Max subscribers, Google Gemini), you can authenticate with your existing subscription instead:

# In your config.yaml
clients:
  - type: claude
    name: my-claude-oauth
    auth: oauth # Indicate you want to authenticate with OAuth instead of an API key

coyote --authenticate my-claude-oauth
# Or via the REPL: .authenticate

For full details, see the authentication documentation.

Configuration

The location of the global Coyote configuration varies between systems, so you can use the following command to find your config.yaml file:

coyote --info | grep 'config_file' | awk '{print $2}'

The configuration file consists of a number of settings. To see a full example configuration file with every setting defined, refer to the example configuration file.

Default LLM

The following settings are available to configure the default LLM that is used when you start Coyote, and its hyperparameters:

Setting	Description
model	The default LLM to use when no model is provided
temperature	The default temperature parameter for all models (0,1); Used unless explicitly overridden
top_p	The default top_p hyperparameter value to use for all models, with a range of (0,1) (or (0,2) for some models); Used unless explicitly overridden

CLI Behavior

You can use the following settings to modify the behavior of Coyote:

Setting	Default Value	Description
stream	true	Controls whether to use stream-style APIs when querying for completions from LLM providers
save	true	Controls whether to save each query/response to every model to messages.md for posterity; Useful for debugging
keybindings	emacs	Specifies which keybinding schema to use; can either be emacs or vi
editor	null	What text editor Coyote should use to edit the input buffer or session (e.g. vim, emacs, nano, hx); Defaults to $EDITOR
wrap	no	Controls whether text is wrapped (can be no, auto, or some <max_width>
wrap_code	false	Enables or disables the wrapping of code blocks

Preludes

Preludes let you define the default behavior for the different operating modes of Coyote. The available settings are shown below:

Setting	Description
repl_prelude	This setting lets you specify a default session or role to use when starting Coyote in REPL mode. Values can be role:<name> to define a role session:<name> to define a session <session>:<role> to define both a session and a role to use
cmd_prelude	This setting lets you specify a default session or role to use when running one-off queries in Coyote via the CLI. Values can be role:<name> to define a role session:<name> to define a session <session>:<role> to define both a session and a role to use
agent_session	This setting is used to specify a default session that all agents should start into, unless otherwise specified in the agent configuration. (e.g. temp, default)

Appearance

The appearance of Coyote can be modified using the following settings:

Setting	Default Value	Description
highlight	true	This setting enables or disables syntax highlighting
light_theme	false	This setting toggles light mode in Coyote

Miscellaneous Settings

Setting	Default Value	Description
user_agent	null	The name of the User-Agent that should be passed in the User-Agent header on all requests to model providers
save_shell_history	true	Enables or disables REPL command history