Profiles and setup

Profiles let you package a model, a system prompt, tool permissions, and MCP servers into a reusable preset that you activate with -p <profile-name>.

Interactive setup wizard

Run clai setup (or clai s) to launch the interactive configuration TUI:

• clai setup 0 — General config (textConfig.json, photoConfig.json, videoConfig.json, audioConfig.json, skills.json, theme.json)
• clai setup 1 — Model files (vendor/model-specific JSON configs)
• clai setup 2 — Text generation profiles (profiles/<name>.json)
• clai setup 3 — MCP server configuration (mcpServers/<name>.json)
• clai setup 4 — Shell contexts (shellContexts/<name>.json)

Profile file structure

Each profile lives at ~/.config/.clai/profiles/<name>.json:

{
  "model": "gpt-5.2",
  "prompt": "You are a security-focused Go code reviewer. Point out race conditions and error handling gaps.",
  "use_tools": true,
  "tools": ["rg", "file_tree", "find"],
  "mcp_servers": {},
  "use_lookback": false
}

Using a profile

Pass -p <name> (-profile) to use a profile from ~/.config/.clai/profiles/, or -prp <file> (-profile-path) to load a profile from a project-specific path:

clai profiles list
clai -p reviewer q "Audit internal/chat/handler.go"
clai -prp ./.clai/reviewer.json q "Run project review"

See Configuration for every profile field.