swe-agent--swe-agent/docs/config/config.md

Configuration

This page contains details describing how to write your own configurations to control how agents can interact with the SWEEnv environment.

A configuration is represented in one or more .yaml files, specified by the --config flag in the command line interface, allowing you to...

• Define the tools that agents may use to traverse + modify a codebase.
• Write prompts that are deterministically/conditionally shown to the agent over the course of a single trajectory.
• Use demonstrations to guide the agent's behavior.
• Change the model behavior of the agent.
• Control the input/output interface that sits between the agent and the environment

!!! tip "Default config files" Our default config files are in the config/ directory.

For multimodal support, use `config/default_mm_with_images.yaml` which includes image processing capabilities.

To use a config file, you can use the --config flag in the command line interface.

sweagent run --config config/your_config.yaml
sweagent run-batch --config config/your_config.yaml

You can also use more than one config file, e.g., --config config/default.yaml --config my_config.yaml (note that you need to repeat --config). Config options are merged in a nested way.

This is the current default configuration file which is loaded when no --config flag is provided:

default.yaml

--8<-- "config/default.yaml"

!!! hint "Relative paths" Relative paths in config files are resolved to the SWE_AGENT_CONFIG_ROOT environment variable (if set) or the SWE-agent repository root.

Multimodal Configuration

For working with images and vision-capable models, SWE-agent provides specialized multimodal configuration options.

These options are best demonstrated in default_mm_with_images.yaml.

This configuration enables full image processing capabilities:

• SWE-bench Multimodal Image processing: Downloads and converts GitHub issue images to base64 format for SWE-bench Multimodal instances.
• Extended observation length: Increases observation token limits to accommodate images
• Image tools: Includes image_tools bundle for viewing images
• Web browsing tools: Includes web_browser bundle for using web browsers
• History processing: Enables image_parsing history processor for parsing

Key Multimodal Settings

agent:
  templates:
    disable_image_processing: false  # enable/disable image processing
    max_observation_length: 10_000_000  # increased for images
  tools:
    bundles:
      - path: tools/image_tools  # image viewing capabilities
      - path: tools/web_browser  # browser automation tools
  history_processors:
    - type: image_parsing  # process image tools outputs (required for tools to work)

See the multimodal guide for detailed configuration options.