Thinking, effort & retries

Many models can "think" before they answer. More thinking often means better answers on hard problems, but it also costs more and takes longer. This page covers the settings that control that trade-off, plus how Empryo retries when a provider is busy.

Open /provider-settings in the terminal UI, or Provider Options in the desktop settings, to change these per model. You can also edit config directly:

{
  "thinking": {
    "mode": "adaptive"
  }
}

Thinking modeLink to this section

When the mode is enabled, set the budget with thinking.budgetTokens (at least 1024). /provider-settings offers 1024, 2048, 5000, 10000 and 20000.

Reasoning effortLink to this section

Some models take a thinking *budget* in tokens. Others take an *effort level* instead. Set the level from the control in the message box, with /effort, or in config:

{
  "performance": {
    "effort": "high"
  }
}

The levels, from least to most thinking: off, none, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, max.

No model supports all of them. The control only offers levels your current model accepts. If you set a level higher than a model supports, it uses the highest level that model accepts. Choosing a level never turns reasoning off.

When settings overlap, the first match in this order wins:

The per-provider keys:

Anthropic context optionsLink to this section

Anthropic offers a few extra ways to manage long conversations on its side. Set them in /provider-settings or under contextManagement in config:

• Keep thinking blocks (clearThinking, on by default) keeps earlier thinking in the conversation, which keeps requests consistent from turn to turn.
• Clear old tool uses (clearToolUses, off by default) removes old tool results once the conversation passes 65% of the context window (and at least 120,000 tokens).
• Server-side compaction (compact, off by default) lets Anthropic compact the conversation on models with a context window of 200,000 tokens or more.

Empryo also has its own compaction, which works with every provider.

OpenAI server-side compactionLink to this section

The OpenAI provider settings now expose the same contextManagement.compact switch. It is off by default. For first-party OpenAI GPT-5.2 and newer, Empryo can send a large, self-contained Responses request through `/responses/compact` before inference. It forwards the entire returned context window, including its encrypted compaction item, as the next request's input.

This is per-request input reduction. Empryo keeps its readable conversation history and recomputes the compacted input on subsequent large requests. Compaction calls add latency and token cost. Their usage is recorded separately. Empryo's normal client-side compaction remains active.

This path does not change ChatGPT subscriptions, Codex or custom providers. Requests using previous_response_id, conversations, item references or explicitly configured context_management stay on their existing path. A compaction failure or 30-second deadline reports the problem and sends the original request instead. Cancelling the caller stops both requests.

When a provider rejects an optionLink to this section

If a provider rejects a setting, for example a thinking mode the model doesn't support, Empryo retries the request with fewer options instead of failing.

Retries when you're rate-limitedLink to this section

When a provider returns errors like 429 (too many requests), 529 or 503, or a response stalls, Empryo waits and tries again. If you hit limits often, raise the retry settings:

{
  "retry": {
    "maxTransientRetries": 5,
    "baseDelayMs": 3000
  }
}

The wait roughly doubles after each attempt: with a 3-second base, that's about 3s, 6s, 12s, 24s, then 48s.

The older maxAttempts key still works and sets both retry counts.

Stream helper requestsLink to this section

Some providers throttle non-streaming requests more heavily than streaming requests. If helpers hit rate limits while main chat works, enable internal streaming for that provider. It works with any provider: built-in API-key providers, subscriptions, gateways, and custom providers from providers. Off by default.

Select a chat model from the provider you want to configure, then:

• Terminal: open /provider-settings, choose General, and toggle Stream helper requests.
• Desktop: open Settings → Provider Options → Shared, and toggle Stream helper requests. Search settings for "helper streaming" to find it.

The row names the current provider. It always writes a global setting, even if the panel scope is Project. It applies to the next helper request, including helpers using other models from that provider. Switching it off keeps other providers' choices.

Helpers consume the stream internally, then return the finished report as before. Main chat, tool execution and result formatting stay unchanged. This applies to dispatched helpers and their recovery attempts, not every background model call. It does not bypass shared quotas or guarantee fewer rate limits.

The global config key is a list of provider ids, not model ids or names. The id is the part of the model id before the first /: openrouter/qwen/qwen3.8-max belongs to openrouter, and a custom provider named my-proxy is my-proxy. empryo --list-providers prints every id.

{
  "subagentStreamProviders": ["openrouter", "my-proxy"]
}

You can also ask Empryo to enable helper streaming for a provider. The agent uses the settings tool with the subagentStreamProviders key and global scope. Project config cannot override it. An empty list disables the opt-in.

For a one-off headless run, override the list with a comma-separated environment value:

EMPRYO_SUBAGENT_STREAM_PROVIDERS=openrouter,my-proxy empryo --headless "Check this project"

The environment list replaces the saved list. An explicitly empty value disables it for that process:

EMPRYO_SUBAGENT_STREAM_PROVIDERS= empryo --headless "Check this project"

Remove the environment variable to use the saved setting again. If the toggle has no effect, check the environment of the process running Empryo.

Speed, service tier and tool callsLink to this section

These live under performance in config. Each command shows its current value when you run it alone.

/thinking and /budget set the thinking mode and budget from the chat in the same way. For Anthropic's context options, /cleartools and /clearthinking set clearToolUses and clearThinking.

NextLink to this section

The same settings panel also has the four provider tools: computer use, code execution, the Anthropic text editor and provider-side search. Each row shows whether the tool is available on the model you've selected.