Settings Reference

Almost every setting in Bromure Agentic Coding belongs to one machine. The session UI calls it a machine; the settings editor still calls it a workspace — they are the same thing. Each machine carries its own credentials, security policies, terminal appearance, shared folders, and VM resources, all edited in one window: the settings editor.

A few things are not per-machine:

• Models has a global board in Preferences › Models that every machine inherits. The per-machine Models pane is an optional override of it.
• Automation (the loopback HTTP API and the bromure-ac mcp server) is app-wide and only appears in Preferences.
• The browser image, the prompt-injection and PII detector models, and on-device model downloads are shared by every machine on the Mac.

This chapter is the reference for the editor and for each of its panes. Each pane has its own page with a screenshot, a settings table with defaults, and pointers to the chapter that explains the feature behind it.

Opening the editor

The editor opens from wherever you happen to be:

To create a machine, use the + on the Virtual Machines section header (tooltip New workspace), New machine… in the new-session screen's machine picker, or New Machine… in ⌘K. They open the same editor, titled New workspace until you type a name, with Create in place of Save. See Machines for the machine lifecycle.

Only one editor window exists at a time. Opening the settings of another machine replaces it; opening the same machine's settings brings the existing window forward.

The editor window

The window title and the heading of every pane show the machine's name. The left column is a sidebar of panes in five groups, with a Search settings field on top; the right column is the selected pane. Cancel (Esc) discards your edits; Save (Return) — Create for a new machine — applies them.

The groups and panes, in sidebar order:

Search settings filters the sidebar as you type. It matches pane names, group names, and a few keywords per pane — for example firewall or openshell finds Sandbox Policy, ram finds Resources, api key finds Models, gdpr finds PII Protection. Every word you type must match. If the selected pane is filtered out, the editor jumps to the first match.

What saves live, and what waits for Save

Edits in the editor are a draft until you click Save. What happens next depends on whether the machine is running.

Applied to a running machine at Save, without a restart: environment variables, credentials (git tokens, API keys, DigitalOcean, Linear, Twilio, container registries, databases), git identity, guardrail write policies and ask-before-use gates, the firewall rules and the OpenShell network policy (both apply as you edit them), telling the agent, the agent watchdog, strict credentials, transparent interception, the insecure-bypass and exfiltration-alert switches, supply-chain policy, prompt-injection policy, PII protection, the trace level, the workspace's model override, terminal font, colors, cursor and opacity, and the machine's name and color.

Needs a restart: VM memory, network mode, shared folders, SSH keys (the workspace key and imported keys), Kubernetes contexts, AWS credentials, and — under the OpenShell engine — Enforce binaries (the strict sandbox), the filesystem / process sandbox and the kernel sentry mode. When you save one of these while the machine runs, the app asks Restart “name” to apply these changes?, lists them, and offers Restart Now… or Later.

Two edits ask before saving:

• Changing shared folders on a suspended machine: Discard suspended VM for “name”? — the saved RAM state can't be resumed with a different set of shares, so saving discards it and the next start is a cold boot. Discard & save or Cancel.
• Changing the browser's permissions or Stay signed in to websites while the browser is open: Restart the browser for “name”? — Restart & Save or Cancel.

Immediate, whatever you do next (not undone by Cancel):

• Everything in Preferences › Models on this Mac: providers, sign-ins, API keys and model picks save as you make them.
• Model downloads: prompt-injection detectors and the PII model start downloading when you tick their box; on-device models download from the On-device source.
• Signing in to or logging out of a provider, and MCP Authorize with OAuth… / Revoke.
• The Automation pane, and in Preferences › Resources the Workspace subnet and Remote transport settings.
• Download Now / Re-download for the browser image.
• The storage actions in Resources (Erase home…, Restore home…, Reset to base…), each after its own confirmation.

Secrets you type in the editor never go into the plain-text profile.json. On save they are split into secrets.enc, encrypted with a key held in the macOS Keychain. See Credentials & the Wire Boundary.

The Defaults template (Preferences)

Preferences… (⌘,) opens a window titled Bromure — Preferences. It holds the same editor, but bound to a template machine named Defaults rather than to a real machine. Every new machine starts as a copy of this template, so what you set there — credentials, guardrails, supply-chain rules, appearance, memory — becomes the starting point for machines you create afterwards. Existing machines are not changed.

The Preferences flavor differs from a machine's editor in a few ways:

• General hides Name, Start this VM at login, Notes, and Reach — they belong to one machine, not to a default.
• Resources has no storage stack (there are no disks to act on) and adds two app-wide sections: Workspace subnet and Remote transport (this Mac's Preferences only).
• Models is the global board, not an override, and saves as you edit.
• The App group appears, with the Automation pane (this Mac's Preferences only).

The factory template runs Claude Code, sets every write policy to Prompt before write, and records sessions at AI request details. The defaults quoted in this chapter are these factory values; once you edit Preferences, new machines inherit yours.

Global Models and the per-machine override

Which providers you have, which sign-ins, and which model each agent runs are set once, globally, in Preferences › Models. Every machine inherits that board. A machine's own Models pane can override it — Inherit, with changes (for example, its own API key for one provider, or a provider switched off) or Standalone (its own complete setup). With the override off, the pane just summarizes what the machine inherits.

See Models for the override and Models & Providers for the global board.

Settings for: editing a remote Mac's defaults

When at least one mirror window onto a remote Mac is open, Preferences shows a Settings for: picker above the editor, offering This Mac and each connected remote. Pressing ⌘, from a mirror window preselects that remote. Choosing a remote loads its template over the connection ("Loading preferences from host…"); the title becomes Preferences — host. If the fetch fails, the window shows Couldn't load the remote preferences with Retry.

A remote's template and its global Models board are edited as a draft and sent back when you click Save. API keys stored on the remote are not sent to your Mac: they show as configured, and they are kept unless you type a new one. Switching targets throws away an unsaved draft rather than carrying it across.

Note: The Automation pane and the Workspace subnet and Remote transport sections of Resources belong to this Mac, so they appear only in this Mac's own Preferences — not in a remote's Preferences, nor when you edit a remote machine from its mirror window. A remote machine's editor also shows no storage stack in Resources.

See Remote Access & Clients for mirror windows.

On iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro

The iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro client uses the same editor to change a machine on the server it connects to:

• iPhone — a Settings-style list: the grouped panes are the first screen and each pushes its own page. Cancel and Save sit in the navigation bar. There is no search field.
• iPad and Apple Vision Pro — the sidebar-and-detail layout of the Mac, with Search settings, and Cancel / Save along the bottom.

Everything in the editor applies on the server. The mobile editor leaves out what only makes sense on the Mac running the machines: the Models and Automation panes, the browser-image section, the firewall rule table and OpenShell policy editor, and the bridged-interface picker. A few fields change shape: Add folder… asks for the folder's absolute path on the server, and AWS SSO takes the profile name as typed.

The panes

Where settings are stored

A machine's settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/BromureAC/profiles/<uuid>/profile.json, with its secrets in the adjacent encrypted secrets.enc. The Defaults template is profile-template.json plus profile-template.enc next to the profiles directory, so it never appears as a machine. The global Models board is stored encrypted in models.enc. The Automation pane and the subnet and remote-transport settings are app preferences (the io.bromure.agentic-coding defaults domain), not part of any profile.