Configuration

LLM providers, API keys, environment variables, and runtime settings.

LLM Providers

Context Pilot supports 5 LLM providers. Switch between them at runtime via the Configuration panel (press p).

Provider	Models	Env Variable
Anthropic	Claude Sonnet, Claude Haiku	`ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`
Claude Code	Claude Sonnet (Code variant)	`CLAUDE_CODE_API_KEY`
DeepSeek	DeepSeek Chat, DeepSeek Coder	`DEEPSEEK_API_KEY`
Grok	Grok-2	`GROK_API_KEY`
Groq	Llama, Mixtral (fast inference)	`GROQ_API_KEY`

💡 Recommendation Anthropic Claude Sonnet provides the best experience — Context Pilot's tool descriptions and workflows are optimized for Claude's tool use patterns.

API Keys

Set API keys as environment variables. At least one LLM provider key is required.

# Required: at least one LLM provider
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# Optional: additional providers
export DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=sk-...
export GROK_API_KEY=xai-...
export GROQ_API_KEY=gsk_...
export CLAUDE_CODE_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# Optional: web search
export BRAVE_API_KEY=BSA...

# Optional: web scraping
export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-...

# Optional: GitHub integration
export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_...

Environment Variables

You can set environment variables in three ways:

Shell export — export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=... in your shell profile
.env file — create a .env file in the Context Pilot installation directory
deploy_local.sh — the deploy script auto-exports keys from .env

⚠️ Security Never commit API keys to version control. The .env file in the Context Pilot directory is gitignored by default. Each project's .context-pilot/ directory is also gitignored.

Runtime Settings

These settings can be changed while Context Pilot is running, via the Configuration panel or tools:

Setting	How to change	Description
LLM Provider	`p` key in Config panel	Switch between active providers
Model	`m` key in Config panel	Switch model within provider
Context Threshold	Arrow keys in Config panel	Soft limit for context management
Max Output Tokens	Arrow keys in Config panel	Max tokens per AI response
Max Cost	Arrow keys in Config panel	Cost guard rail ($0.50 increments)
Auto-continuation	`s` key or `spine_configure`	Toggle autonomous mode
Tool enable/disable	`tool_manage`	Enable or disable individual tools
Module activate/deactivate	`module_toggle`	Activate or deactivate modules

Config Files

Context Pilot stores configuration in .context-pilot/ within each project:

.context-pilot/
├── config.json          # Runtime config (provider, model, thresholds)
├── memory.json          # Persistent memories
├── logs.json            # Timestamped logs
├── todos.json           # Todo list
├── scratchpad.json      # Scratchpad cells
├── conversations/       # Conversation history segments
├── agents/              # Custom agents (system prompts)
├── skills/              # Custom skills (knowledge)
├── commands/            # Custom slash commands
├── presets/             # Custom presets
├── callbacks/           # Callback definitions + scripts
└── shared/
    └── typst-templates/ # Reusable Typst templates

ℹ️ Persistence All state files are automatically loaded on startup and saved on changes. You can safely quit and restart — everything is preserved.