Configuration

Commander is configured through environment variables and configuration files.

Environment Variables

Core

Variable	Default	Description
COMMANDER_MODE	auto-edit	Approval mode: plan, read-only, auto-edit, full-auto, suggest
COMMANDER_DEBUG	false	Enable verbose debug logging
COMMANDER_LOG_LEVEL	info	Log level: debug, info, warn, error
COMMANDER_LOG_PERSIST	false	Enable log persistence to disk (auto-degrades to Error-only when backlog >10000)
COMMANDER_MAX_CONCURRENCY	5	Maximum concurrent agent executions
COMMANDER_TIMEOUT_MS	120000	Default execution timeout (ms)

Server

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	4000	HTTP server port
HOST	0.0.0.0	HTTP server host
CORS_ORIGIN	*	CORS allowed origins
RATE_LIMIT_WINDOW_MS	60000	Rate limit window (ms)
RATE_LIMIT_MAX	100	Max requests per window

Multi-Tenancy

Variable	Default	Description
TENANT_PROVIDER	null	null (single-tenant) or simple (multi-tenant)
TENANT_PROVIDER_CONFIG	—	JSON config for tenant mapping

Security

Variable	Default	Description
COMMANDER_SECURITY_PROFILE	standard	Sandbox profile: strict, standard, permissive, hardened
COMMANDER_EVENT_SOURCING_WAL	.commander_state/event-sourcing.wal	Event sourcing WAL file path
WARROOM_STORAGE	memory	War Room storage backend: memory or sqlite

Observability

Variable	Default	Description
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT	—	OpenTelemetry OTLP endpoint
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME	commander	OpenTelemetry service name

CLI Configuration

Commander supports a .commander.json config file in your project root:

{
  "provider": "auto",
  "model": "auto",
  "mode": "balanced",
  "topology": "auto",
  "budget": "auto",
  "mcpServers": [],
  "a2a": {
    "server": {
      "enabled": false,
      "port": 3002,
      "host": "127.0.0.1"
    },
    "remoteAgents": []
  }
}

Field	Default	Description
provider	auto	Primary LLM provider
model	auto	Model name
mode	balanced	Execution mode: fast, balanced, thorough
topology	auto	Orchestration topology: auto, single, chain, dispatch, orchestrator, review
budget	auto	Token budget (integer ≥1000 or auto)
mcpServers	[]	MCP server configurations
a2a	—	Agent-to-Agent server and remote agent config

API keys are never stored in the config file — they remain in environment variables or system keychain.

Provider Config

Set any single provider key. Commander auto-detects and chains fallbacks:

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...        # Primary: OpenAI | Fallback: DeepSeek → GLM → MiMo
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-... # Anthropic Claude
export GOOGLE_API_KEY=...           # Google Gemini

See the full providers list.