Keys and Defaults

basemode supports both environment variables and a persistent local key store.

Persistent key storage

Keys are saved to:

• ~/.config/basemode/auth.json

File mode is restricted to user-only (0600).

Use:

basemode keys set openai
basemode keys list
basemode keys get openai

Load order

At startup, settings are loaded in this order (later wins):

1. ~/.config/basemode/auth.json
2. .env (project-local if present)
3. Existing process environment variables

Environment variables are never overwritten by stored keys.

Default model

Set a default model once:

basemode default claude-sonnet-4-6

Show current default:

basemode default

Clear it:

basemode default --unset

When unset, CLI generation defaults to gpt-4o-mini.