# Alchemist: Agent Pipeline Configuration

Tune the agent pipeline per project: models, effort, and per-phase overrides.

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Every build ticket runs through a pipeline of phases (**plan**, **implement**, **review**, **security**, and **docs**) plus a read-only **investigate** phase for research-only tickets. By default each phase uses a platform-tuned model and reasoning setting. The **Agent pipeline configuration** panel, on a project's settings page, lets you override any of that per project, per phase.

For each phase you can set:

- **Model.** Pin a specific model for that phase. Choose from the built-in catalog or any OpenRouter model (pick from the fetched list or paste a custom `openrouter/...` id).
- **Reasoning.** The **effort** and **thinking** level. Options are gated to what the chosen model supports, so you can't pick an invalid combination.
- **Additional instructions.** Extra guidance appended to that phase's prompt. This runs *after* the built-in framing, so it's safe. The tool contract and required terminal actions are still enforced.
- **Prompt override** (advanced). Replace the editable body of the phase's prompt entirely. Powerful, but you own the result. A bad override can break that phase's runs.

## How a phase resolves its settings

Settings resolve in priority order, highest first. The **Effective configuration** table at the top of the panel shows what each phase will actually use and which layer won, via the source badge:

1. **project.** Your per-project override (this panel).
2. **env.** A platform operator environment override.
3. **tier.** The project's pipeline tier (for example a faster or cheaper tier).
4. **default.** The platform's built-in default for that phase.

Leaving a field blank means that phase falls through to the next layer. **Leaving everything blank is identical to the platform default.** The panel only changes behavior for the fields you set.

## When to actually touch this

Most projects should leave this alone. The defaults are tuned. Reach for it when:

- A project is cost-sensitive and the work is routine, so a cheaper tier is fine.
- A project has unusual domain constraints worth adding to **Additional instructions** on the plan phase, for example "this app must remain compatible with the client's Q-SYS Core firmware, do not introduce dependencies requiring newer runtimes."
- You're debugging a phase that keeps producing the wrong shape of output.

## Resetting

Each phase has a **Reset** button that clears all of its overrides and returns it to the resolved default. Resetting one phase never touches the others.

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