VMPilot Configuration Guide

Overview

VMPilot features a flexible configuration system that allows you to customize your environment, LLM providers, and model parameters. This guide explains all available configuration options and how to set them up.

VMPilot also supports project-specific configuration through the .vmpilot directory structure. See the Project Plugin documentation for details on how to set up and customize project-specific settings.

Applying Configuration Changes

After modifying the config.ini file, you must restart the VMPilot server for the changes to take effect.

Docker Install: Configuration File Location

For Docker installations, assuming you are using the default volume setup, the configuration file is located at /var/lib/docker/volumes/vmpilot_config/_data/config.ini

To apply changes, restart the VMPilot container:

Bash
docker exec vmpilot supervisorctl restart vmpilot

Manual Install: Configuration File Priority

VMPilot searches for configuration files in the following order:

Custom path specified in VMPILOT_CONFIG environment variable
./config.ini in the project directory
config.ini in the current working directory
~/.config/vmpilot/config.ini

The first configuration file found will be used.

To apply changes, restart the VMPilot server:

Bash
1	`$MVPILOT_HOME/bin/run.sh`

Configuration Sections

The config.ini file is organized into the following sections:

General Settings [general]

Setting	Description	Default
default_provider	Primary LLM provider (anthropic/openai)	anthropic
default_project	Default project directory for git operations and file access	~/vmpilot
tool_output_lines	Number of lines shown in tool output	15
pricing_display	Controls how pricing information is displayed (disabled, total_only, or detailed)	detailed

Note: The default_project setting is used when no workspace-specific project is defined. For multi-branch development, you can override this by setting $PROJECT_ROOT=/path/to/project in each workspace's system prompt. When a project directory is set, VMPilot will check for the .vmpilot/prompts/project.md file and include it in the system prompt. See Multi-Branch Development and Project Plugin for details.

Pricing Settings [pricing]

Setting	Description	Default
claude_input_price	Claude 3.7 Sonnet input cost per million tokens (MTok)	3.00
claude_output_price	Claude 3.7 Sonnet output cost per million tokens (MTok)	15.00
claude_cache_creation_price	Claude 3.7 Sonnet cache creation cost per million tokens (MTok)	3.75
claude_cache_read_price	Claude 3.7 Sonnet cache read cost per million tokens (MTok)	0.30

Note: The pricing values should be updated if Claude's pricing model changes. These values reflect the pricing as of March 2025.

Model Settings [model]

Setting	Description	Default
recursion_limit	Maximum recursive steps allowed	25

Inference Settings [inference]

Setting	Description	Default
temperature	Model creativity (0.0-1.0)	0.7
max_tokens	Maximum response length	2000

Provider Settings [anthropic] / [openai]

Setting	Description	Example
default_model	Default model name	claude-3.5 Sonnet
api_key_path	Path to API key file	~/.anthropic_key
api_key_env	API key environment variable	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
beta_flags	Optional beta features (key:value pairs)	feature1:on,feature2:off

Git Settings [git]

Setting	Description	Default
enabled	Enable or disable Git tracking	true
dirty_repo_action	Action when repository has uncommitted changes (stop, stash)	stash
auto_commit	Automatically commit changes after each exchange	true
commit_message_style	Style of generated commit messages (short, detailed, bullet_points)	bullet_points
model	Model used for commit message generation	claude-3-7-sonnet-latest
provider	Provider for commit message generation (anthropic, openai)	anthropic
temperature	Temperature for commit message generation (0.0-1.0)	0.7
commit_prefix	Prefix added to all commit messages	[VMPilot]
author	Author name and email for Git commits	VMPilot vmpilot@example.com

Database Settings

Setting	Description	Default
enabled	Enable or disable database persistence for conversations	false
path	Path to SQLite database file	/app/data/vmpilot.db

Example Configuration

INI
[general]
default_provider = anthropic
tool_output_lines = 15
pricing_display = detailed

[pricing]
# Pricing information for Claude 3.7 Sonnet (per million tokens - MTok)
claude_input_price = 3.00
claude_output_price = 15.00
claude_cache_creation_price = 3.75
claude_cache_read_price = 0.30

[model]
recursion_limit = 25

[inference]
temperature = 0.7
max_tokens = 2000

[anthropic]
default_model = claude-3-7-sonnet-latest
api_key_path = ~/.anthropic/api_key
api_key_env = ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
beta_flags = computer-use-2024-10-22:true

[openai]
default_model = o3-mini
api_key_path = ~/.openai
api_key_env = OPENAI_API_KEY

[git]
enabled = true
dirty_repo_action = stash
auto_commit = true
commit_message_style = bullet_points
model = claude-3-7-sonnet-latest
provider = anthropic
temperature = 0.7
commit_prefix = [VMPilot]
author = VMPilot <vmpilot@example.com>

[database]
enabled = true
path = /app/data/vmpilot.db

Database Settings [database]

Setting	Description	Default
enabled	Enable or disable database persistence for conversations	false
path	Path to SQLite database file	/app/data/vmpilot.db

Note: When database persistence is enabled, VMPilot stores all conversations in a SQLite database, allowing chat history to persist across server restarts. This is particularly useful for maintaining context in long-running development sessions and supporting the CLI's chat mode with the -c flag across multiple invocations. For Docker installations, the database is stored in the vmpilot_data volume by default.

Environment Variables

VMPILOT_CONFIG: Optional path to configuration file
Provider-specific API key variables (as specified in config.ini)