Configuration

bottega-kit reads one personal file, an optional key file beside it, an optional file per repository, optional prompt overrides, and a few environment variables. No secret goes in the configuration, the prompts, the tasks or the receipts; the key file holds what you put in it, and is read only while you alone can read it.

The configuration file

${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/bottega-kit/config.json. bottega init writes a starter for the harnesses it finds on PATH and refuses to overwrite an existing file without --force. bottega doctor validates it.

{
  "schema_version": 1,
  "profiles": {
    "fable":         {"harness": "claude", "model": "claude-fable-5-1", "effort": "max"},
    "opus-builder":  {"harness": "claude", "model": "claude-opus-5-5",  "effort": "high"},
    "opus-reviewer": {"harness": "claude", "model": "claude-opus-5-5",  "effort": "high"},
    "sol-builder":   {"harness": "codex",  "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",     "effort": "high"}
  },
  "roles": {"planner": "fable", "implementer": "opus-builder",
            "reviewer": "opus-reviewer", "judge": "fable"},
  "rounds": 3
}

Any other top-level key is an error.

Profiles

A profile is a harness, a model and an effort.

Any other key is an error.

Model identity. After each dispatch, the model the harness reports must be the requested model or one of aliases. Anything else stops the task with identity-mismatch. For Claude Code the check uses the session’s model and each turn’s model; helper models it lists in its usage are recorded and not checked.

Environment references. "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "${ZAI_API_KEY}" is expanded when the harness starts, from your environment or, for a name your environment does not set, from the key file below. A referenced variable that is set in neither fails doctor, plan, approve, run and resume (exit 2); it is never sent empty. Receipts record the variable names, never the values.

Proxied Claude profiles. A claude profile whose env sets ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL talks to another endpoint. For it, bottega-kit:

• runs Claude Code with a fresh, temporary CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, deleted after the run;
• removes these variables from the inherited environment before applying the profile’s env: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN, ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN, ANTHROPIC_CUSTOM_HEADERS, ANTHROPIC_MODEL, CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK, CLAUDE_CODE_USE_VERTEX, CLAUDE_CODE_USE_FOUNDRY.

So your Anthropic credentials never reach the third-party endpoint. The profile’s own env may set any of them again. Claude Code does not know the endpoint’s prices: the receipt’s cost_usd and the max_budget_usd limit use its own default table, which overstated a GLM run on Z.AI about fifteenfold on 2026-10-20 (see compatibility.md).

Harnesses authenticate on their own: Claude Code through its login or keychain, Codex through ~/.codex. bottega-kit never handles their credentials.

The key file

${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/bottega-kit/secrets.env, beside config.json, holds the values profiles reference when you would rather not export them in every shell:

ZAI_API_KEY=...

One NAME=value line per variable; blank lines and # comments are skipped, and an export prefix, quotes around the value and CRLF are tolerated. The file is parsed, never executed. Create it with touch and chmod 600: a file that group or others can read is refused, not read, and doctor, plan, approve, run and resume say which chmod to run and exit 2 until you do.

The environment wins: a variable set in your environment is used even when the file holds another value. Only the expanded profile env reaches a harness, never the rest of the file, and receipts record names only. There is no per-project .env: bottega-kit never reads one from a repository or a worktree, where a key would be one git add away from a commit.

Roles

A role names a profile. One profile may serve several roles. The value auto is reserved and refused for now.

Per-task overrides. --role implementer=sol-builder, on bottega new, changes one role for one task. The effective bindings, the configuration’s roles with the task’s overrides on top, are frozen when you approve: which profile each role uses no longer changes. The profiles themselves are read again each time plan, run or resume starts, so a new model or effort in a profile applies from the next of those commands (not mid-run), and removing a profile a task uses makes run and resume refuse.

bottega.json

A repository may hold bottega.json at its root:

{"test_cmd": "make test", "base": "main"}

• test_cmd is given to the agents as the project’s test command. Without it, they are told to find the project’s documented one.
• base is the branch new tasks start from and pull requests target.

The base branch is chosen in this order: bottega new --base, then bottega.json, then origin/HEAD, then main, then master. Nothing is fetched, so origin/HEAD is as fresh as your last fetch.

Prompts

The four prompts ship in the kit’s prompts/ directory: planner.md, implementer.md, reviewer.md, judge.md. To change one, copy it to ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/bottega-kit/prompts/<name>.md and edit it; the override wins as long as it exists.

Variables are written {{name}}, with no spaces. An override naming an unknown variable is refused before anything runs; text such as {{ phase title }}, with spaces, is left as it is.

Environment variables

npx bottega-kit passes BOTTEGA_DATA_HOME and BOTTEGA_BIN_HOME through to install.sh, and takes --ref <tag-or-branch>, --repo <git-url> and --skip-doctor. By default it installs the tag bottega-kit--v<version> matching the npm package.

doctor

bottega doctor [--json] checks python3, git and gh (a missing gh is a warning), the configuration, the key file’s mode and shape (it prints the variable names it holds, never a value), and for each bound role: the profile, its effort, its harness answering --version, and its ${NAME} variables, saying whether each comes from the environment or from the key file. Any failure exits 2. ./doctor.sh, in a clone, also compares the installed version with the clone’s.