Settings & Customization

Kangentic is designed to adapt to your workflow. Customize everything from visual themes to how agents behave in each column.

Accessing Settings

Kangentic has two levels of settings:

• Global Settings — Click the gear icon in the title bar. These apply to all projects.
• Project Settings — Click the gear icon next to a project in the sidebar. These override global settings for that project only.

Project settings are stored in .kangentic/config.json within the project. Some settings (like max concurrent sessions and sidebar width) are global-only and cannot be overridden per-project.

Search

A search bar at the top of the settings panel filters settings by keyword. Type multiple words to narrow results — all tokens must match. Results are grouped by tab with match count badges on the sidebar tabs. Tabs with zero matches are dimmed. Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) to focus the search bar, Escape to clear the filter.

Sync to All Projects

When you change a project default in Global Settings, a confirmation modal asks if you want to apply the change to all existing projects. This is useful for rolling out a setting change across your workspace.

Settings Tabs

Appearance

Setting	Description
Theme	Choose from 10 built-in themes (see below)

Choose from 10 built-in themes:

Category	Themes
Base	Dark, Light
Dark variants	Moon, Forest, Ocean, Ember
Light variants	Sand, Mint, Sky, Peach

Layout

Added in v0.15.0. Controls density, sizing, and visibility of major UI chrome.

Setting	Description
Card Density	Task card compactness: compact, default, or comfortable
Column Width	Column width: narrow, default, or wide
Terminal Panel Visible	Toggle the bottom terminal panel
Status Bar Visible	Toggle the status bar at the bottom of the window
Animations Enabled	Enable or disable UI transition animations
Restore Window Position	Restore the window’s position, size, and maximized state from the previous session
Board Layout	horizontal (scroll sideways) or vertical (scroll down)

Terminal

Setting	Description
Shell	Override the auto-detected shell
Font Family	Terminal font
Font Size	Terminal text size in pixels
Scrollback Lines	Lines kept in the visible scrollback buffer (1000 to 100000, default 5000). Full session history is preserved for replay regardless of this value
Cursor Style	Terminal cursor appearance: block, underline, or bar (default block)
Show Preview	Show a terminal preview snippet in task cards

Agent

Setting	Description
Default Agent	Which CLI to spawn by default for new tasks: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, Aider, or Warp (Oz CLI). Only installed agents are shown in the picker (detection runs on launch)
Permission Mode	Default permission mode for spawned agents. The dropdown updates dynamically based on what the selected agent supports
CLI Paths	Per-agent CLI path overrides (one path per detected agent). Leave blank to auto-detect on PATH
Idle Timeout	Auto-suspend sessions after N minutes of inactivity. 0 disables
Auto-Resume Agents on Restart	When on (default), sessions that were running when you last closed Kangentic auto-resume on next launch. Turn off if auto-resuming many agents at once overwhelms your machine; paused sessions wait for a manual Resume click on each task

Git

Setting	Description
Worktrees Enabled	Create isolated branches per task
Auto Cleanup	Delete branches when worktrees are removed
Default Base Branch	Branch to create worktrees from (default: main)
Copy Files	Files to copy from repo root into new worktrees
Init Script	Shell script to run after worktree creation

Behavior

Setting	Default	Description
Max Concurrent Sessions	8	How many agents can run at once (excess tasks are queued)
Queue Overflow	Queue	What happens when the concurrent limit is hit: queue new sessions or reject them
Auto-Focus Idle Session	Off	Auto-switch to a session’s terminal tab when it goes idle
Show Board Search	On	Show the search bar above board columns

Note

Several confirmation dialogs (delete task, Done-move worktree cleanup, board-config apply) have built-in “don’t ask again” checkboxes. Tick them to suppress the corresponding prompt without visiting Settings. The underlying skipDeleteConfirm / skipDoneWorktreeConfirm / skipBoardConfigConfirm keys are still editable in config.json.

Privacy

Kangentic collects anonymous usage analytics via Aptabase to help improve the product. Only high-level events are collected (e.g., app_launch, project_added) — no code, task content, or personal data.

To opt out, set the environment variable:

KANGENTIC_TELEMETRY=off

Permission Modes

Each agent session runs with a permission mode that controls how much autonomy the agent has. Kangentic supports multiple agents, and each agent advertises its own set of supported modes — the dropdown updates dynamically when you switch agents.

Mode	Description	Supported by
Plan	Read-only tools auto-approved; edits require approval	All agents
Default	Uses the agent’s built-in defaults (e.g., Claude Code’s .claude/settings.json allowlist)	All agents
Accept Edits	File edits auto-approved; other actions require approval	All agents
Bypass	Full autonomy — no prompts at all	All agents
Don’t Ask	Deny everything not already allowed — no interactive prompts	Claude, Codex, Copilot
Auto	Classifier-driven auto-approval	Claude, Copilot

Defaults vary: Claude, Codex, Gemini, and Copilot default to Accept Edits. Aider and Cursor default to Bypass Permissions (Aider is an edit-first CLI that expects broad file-write access; Cursor runs in non-interactive mode so its stream-JSON init event fires and the ContextBar model pill resolves). Warp defaults to Default; its permission-mode labels are informational, since Warp manages permissions via agent profiles (--profile).

When you switch an agent globally or per-column, Kangentic preserves the current mode if the new agent supports it; otherwise it falls back to that agent’s recommended default.

The most specific setting wins:

1. Column’s permission_strategy (if set)
2. Action’s permissionMode config (if set)
3. agent.permissionMode from config

Tip

Use Plan mode on a “Planning” column so the agent creates a plan first, then auto-moves to an “Executing” column where it runs with more autonomy. See Custom Workflows for details.

Per-Column Customization

Each column on your board can be individually configured. Click the settings icon on any column header to access:

Option	Description
Name	Column display name
Color	Header accent color
Icon	Lucide icon name (e.g., square-terminal, code, flask-conical)
Agent Override	Use a specific agent (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, Aider, or Warp/Oz CLI) for sessions in this column instead of the project default. The permission mode dropdown re-populates with the new agent’s supported modes. Hidden for To Do / Done columns
Permission Mode	Override the global permission mode for agents in this column
Auto Spawn	Whether dragging a task here spawns an agent (default: on)
Auto Command	A prompt injected into the running session when a task arrives
Handoff Context	When enabled, the prior agent’s native session history file is passed to the new agent as context on column entry — enables multi-agent handoff across agent types
Plan Exit Target	For plan-mode columns: where tasks move when planning completes

Column Roles

Two columns have special roles:

• Backlog — Holding area. Moving a task here kills its session (worktree is preserved).
• Done — Moving a task here suspends its session (preserving context for later resume) and archives the task.

All other columns are fully customizable with no built-in behavior.

Config File Locations

Windows

%APPDATA%/kangentic/config.json

macOS

~/Library/Application Support/kangentic/config.json

Linux

~/.config/kangentic/config.json

For the full configuration reference with JSON keys and types, see Configuration Reference.