Per-Scene Agent Overrides

Every agent has a set of global settings that apply to all of your scenes. Sometimes a single scene needs different behavior — a longer conversation length, a different narration style, or an action turned off — without you having to change your global configuration and remember to change it back afterwards.

Per-scene agent overrides let you do exactly that. You can override selected agent settings for the current scene only. Anything you don't override keeps using your global configuration.

How overrides work

Overrides are sparse: only the specific fields you choose to override are stored. Everything else falls through to the global agent settings. This means that if you later change a global setting, scenes pick up that change automatically — unless they have an active override for that particular field.

Each overridden field is independent. You can override the conversation length for a scene while leaving its format, client, and every other setting on the global value.

Editing overrides: the Global / Scene switch

Overrides are edited in the same place as global settings — the agent modal (opened by clicking an agent in the agent panel).

When a scene is loaded and the agent has at least one setting that supports overrides, a Global / Scene switch appears at the top of the modal:

Global — the normal view. Changes here affect every scene.
Scene — the override view. Changes here apply only to the current scene.

A small number next to the Scene button shows how many overrides are currently active for that agent.

Note

The switch only appears while a saved scene is loaded. Overrides need a scene (and its project folder) to be stored in, so they aren't available on the placeholder/empty scene.

Activating an override for a field

In Scene mode, each overridable setting has a small link icon next to it:

Inheriting global — the field is using the global value and is read-only. Click the icon to start overriding it.
Override active — the field is overriding the global value for this scene. Edit it freely, or click the icon again to go back to inheriting the global value.

When you activate an override, the field starts out seeded with the current global value, so you always begin from a known state.

Any action that can be switched off globally can also be switched off for the scene alone: its enable checkbox carries the same link icon as the individual settings. So a scene can turn off Auto Narration, Revision, Scene Analysis, Long Term Memory and so on without touching your global configuration.

Some sections are always on by design — for example the World State's Character Portraits, the Summarizer's Scene History, and the Conversation and Narrator Generation sections. They have no enable checkbox and cannot be switched off globally or per scene; a false left for one in the configuration file (or in a scene's overrides) is ignored.

In Scene mode, the modal only shows the settings (and tabs) that actually support overriding, to keep the view focused. If an agent has no currently overridable settings at all, the Global / Scene switch won't appear.

Some settings only apply while another setting is switched on — for example the Creator agent's Fast-mode fields (Consolidate, One-shot token budget, Fill in misses) only matter while Fast Character Generation is on. Those settings appear in Scene mode only while their gating setting allows it, and the gate is read as this scene sees it: the scene's override if there is one, otherwise the global value. So overriding the gate for a scene reveals the settings it gates, and a section (or tab) whose settings are all currently hidden drops out of Scene mode entirely.

One exception keeps things recoverable: a setting you have already overridden stays visible even when its gate is off, so you can always see it in the count and clear it. Its stored value still applies whenever the gate is on again.

Saving

Overrides are saved automatically when you close the agent modal, the same way global settings are. If the scene doesn't yet have an overrides file (see below), you'll be asked to name one the first time you save an override.

Quick-toggle chips

Some actions and settings are also exposed as quick-toggle chips directly on the agent in the agent panel, so they can be flipped mid-play without opening the modal.

A chip always shows the value the loaded scene is actually running on — the scene override when one is active, your global value otherwise — and clicking it changes exactly the value it is showing:

No override active — the chip toggles the global setting, as it always has.
Override active — the chip carries a small marker and toggles the scene's override only. Your global setting is left alone; hover the chip to see what it currently is.

Unlike the modal, a chip writes immediately — there is nothing to close and no save step.

To go back to following the global value, clear the override in the agent modal's Scene mode.

The overrides file

Per-scene overrides are stored in a JSON file inside an agent-settings/ folder in the scene's project directory. The default file name is agent-settings.json.

A few things worth knowing:

Overrides are project-level. The agent-settings/ folder lives with the project, so every save file in the same project (including Save As copies and restore points) shares the same overrides. Different projects have completely independent overrides.
Overrides travel with exports. When you export a scene, the agent-settings/ folder is included, so your overrides survive being shared with or imported on another system.
Bad files fall back safely. If an overrides file is missing or can't be read, the scene simply falls back to your global configuration and the link is cleared.

Choosing, swapping, or opting out

Which overrides file a scene uses is controlled from World Editor → Scene → Settings, in the Agent settings file dropdown. See Scene Settings for the full description. In short, you can:

Auto-link (default) — the scene automatically uses agent-settings.json if one exists in the project. This is the normal behavior. The first override you set in the agent modal creates this file.
Pick a specific file — link the scene to a particular file in the project's agent-settings/ folder. This lets a project hold more than one overrides file and switch between them.
None (opt out) — disable per-scene overrides entirely for this scene. The scene uses global configuration only and won't auto-link to a default file.

Scene Settings — where the overrides file is chosen, swapped, or opted out.
Agents overview — the global settings that overrides fall back to.