Reference: configuration

Comma is configured via environment variables and the model command. There is no config file.

Environment variables

$env.COMMA_CFG

Used by transform, generate, research, and pipeline (for its LLM critics).

Field	Default	What
provider	gemini	One of anthropic, openai, gemini, openrouter, ollama
model	gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview	Provider-specific model ID
tools	none	One of all, code, web_search, none, or comma-separated subset

Set it:

$env.COMMA_CFG = {provider: openai, model: gpt-4o, tools: none}

$env.COMMA_ANALYZE_CFG

Used by LLM commands in analyze (detect, sentiment, keywords, entities, readability, classify). Separated from COMMA_CFG so analyze NLP can be tuned independently.

Field	Default	What
provider	gemini	Same options as COMMA_CFG
model	gemini-3.1-flash-lite	Fast, cheap NLP — analyze tasks don’t need a stronger model
tools	none	No tools — analyze’s commands are pure text-in, text-out

Override:

$env.COMMA_ANALYZE_CFG = {
    provider: anthropic
    model: claude-haiku-4-5-20251001
    tools: none
}

$env.COMMA_VALIDATE_CFG

Used by validate commands (factcheck, quotes, claims). Separated because these need web_search to do real verification — without it they would hallucinate citations.

Field	Default	What
provider	gemini	Same options as COMMA_CFG
model	gemini-3-pro-preview	A model with reliable tool use and stronger reasoning
tools	web_search,nu	Web search + nushell tool

Override:

$env.COMMA_VALIDATE_CFG = {
    provider: anthropic
    model: claude-sonnet-4-6
    tools: web_search
}

The model command

A convenience wrapper that sets COMMA_CFG:

model <name> [--provider <string>]

Argument	What
name	Model ID
--provider	Provider (if changing); otherwise keeps the current provider

Example:

model claude-sonnet-4-6 --provider anthropic
model gpt-4o --provider openai
model gemini-2.5-pro                          # keeps provider=gemini

The new config persists for the rest of the session. ,? (or status) shows the active config.

Alias: ,m

Module-specific configuration

convert.nu

No environment variables. PDF engine is controlled per-call via --engine. Templates are passed per-call via --template.

publish.nu

Reserved module. No commands exported yet; per-platform configuration will be defined as commands are added.

feeds.nu

$env.COMMA_FEEDS_PROVIDER selects the feed-reader backend.

Value	Backend	Required binary
blogtato (default)	https://github.com/kantord/blogtato	blog

Each provider’s data lives wherever that provider stores it — blogtato keeps its store at ~/Library/Application Support/blogtato/stores/default on macOS (or $RSS_STORE if set). comma does not interpose its own storage; it shells out and reshapes the output into pipe-friendly tables.

research.nu

No environment variables besides what iwe itself reads from your shell (e.g. IWE_ROOT if set, or the discovery of .iwe/ in the current directory tree). Comma does not impose any additional configuration on top of IWE.

Polish-loop configuration

polish has its own per-call flags rather than environment variables:

Flag	Default	Tunes
--lix-min	30	Lower readability bound
--lix-max	50	Upper readability bound
--repeat-min-length	4	n-gram length flagged as repetition
--max-passes	4	Hard pass cap

See reference/pipeline for the full polish reference.

Inspecting current config

,?            # alias for `status` — prints active config + command inventory
status        # same
$env.COMMA_CFG          # raw value
$env.COMMA_ANALYZE_CFG  # if set

Scoping changes to one block

with-env {COMMA_CFG: {provider: openai, model: gpt-4o, tools: none}} {
    "Hello, world" | tr da
}

The override applies only within the block; the original COMMA_CFG is restored after.