Configuration

Configuration

Zinc has two kinds of config:

• runtime config for Zinc itself
• project package config under .zinc/config/packages

Graphs do not contain provider secrets or endpoint settings.

Runtime config

Platform config path:

Platform	Path
Linux	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/zinc/config.yaml or ~/.config/zinc/config.yaml
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/zinc/config.yaml
Windows	%APPDATA%\zinc\config.yaml

A minimal model config:

default_model: local

models:
  local:
    model: model-name-served-by-your-endpoint
    base_url: http://127.0.0.1:30000/v1
    api_key_env:
    context_window: 8192
    chars_per_token: 4
    temperature: 0.7
    reasoning:
      enabled: false
      effort: low

base_url should point to an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Zinc normalizes trailing slashes before calling /chat/completions.

context_window is a model fact supplied by the user. Zinc uses it with runtime.compaction_threshold_percent to decide when a session should compact.

If the endpoint does not return prompt usage, Zinc estimates prompt tokens with chars_per_token.

Selecting models

Use the configured default:

zn "inspect this repo"

Override one run:

zn --model local "use the local model"

Attach a configured model to a graph resource:

resources:
  assistant:
    model:
      using: local
      identity: Zinc
      input:
        - $user_turn
      instructions: Answer directly.

Package config

Project package config lives under:

.zinc/config/packages/<package>.yaml

Package config is user intent. It is not stored inside .zinc/packages/<package> because installed package directories are replaceable.

Browser example:

cdp_url: "http://127.0.0.1:9222"

Browser alternate:

devtools_active_port: "~/.config/chromium/DevToolsActivePort"

Official packages should prefer config files over environment variables for normal user-facing setup.

Doctor

Use zn doctor to inspect the selected model config and endpoint reachability.

zn doctor reports names and presence checks. It does not print secret values.