Personalities

Spec — not shipped: a /personality slash command. Configure personality via /settings or the personality key in config.yml (below).

Personalities change how the agent writes replies, not which tools it has or what sandbox/approval policy applies.

Available personalities (shipped)

A personality injects a <personality> block into the system prompt when enabled, changing tone only.

Schema default: personality: default in settings-schema.ts. The setting is a free-form string, not a closed enum — see Extending the catalog.

Configuring personality

• Settings UI: /settings → Model tab → Prompt group → Personality. Options are resolved at render time (built-ins + your ~/.veyyon/personalities and project .veyyon/personalities files); changing the value refreshes the base system prompt immediately.
• Config file: in ~/.veyyon/agent/config.yml (or profile agent dir):

personality: pragmatic

There is no /personality slash command in the shipped registry. Subagents use none regardless of the main setting (sdk.ts).

Extending the catalog

The 3 shipped personalities are seeds, not a closed set. Add a <name>.md file and its filename stem becomes a selectable personality name; the file body is injected verbatim as the <personality> block:

• User-level: ~/.veyyon/personalities/<name>.md — available in every project.
• Project-level: .veyyon/personalities/<name>.md — available only in that project, and overrides a user or built-in personality of the same name.

Precedence for a given name is project > user > built-in. For example, dropping ~/.veyyon/personalities/pirate.md with the body You speak like a pirate. and setting personality: pirate renders <personality>You speak like a pirate.</personality> with no rebuild. A project .veyyon/personalities/default.md overrides the built-in default for that project only.

Edge cases:

• none is a reserved sentinel that disables the block; a file literally named none.md is ignored (it can never shadow the disable behavior).
• An empty or whitespace-only personality file is treated as absent — the next tier (or the built-in) is used instead, so the block is never emitted empty.
• Setting personality to a name that resolves to nothing (no built-in, user, or project file) falls back to default and prints a visible warning; the <personality> block is never silently emitted empty for a real (non-none) request.

See packages/coding-agent/src/personality/resolver.ts for the resolver implementation.

Boundaries

• Personality does not grant tools, change tools.approvalMode, or bypass sandboxing.
• Personality text is escaped and injected as a bounded system-prompt section; it cannot override project rules or tool policy.

See also

• Configuration
• System prompt customization (engine doc)