Configuration

cheaphelp is configured through ~/.cheaphelp/config.json. The defaults are shown below. Two tiers: a cheap conversational model for the responder, a stronger model for the engineering roles. variants maps a role to an opencode --variant (provider reasoning effort, e.g. max); "" means the provider default. Use cheaphelp config show|get|set to inspect or edit it without hand-editing JSON.

{
  "models": {
    "responder": "openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash",
    "planner":   "openrouter/minimax/minimax-m3",
    "worker":    "openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash",
    "reviewer":  "openrouter/minimax/minimax-m3",
    "rework":    "openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash",
    "fixer":     "openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash"
  },
  "variants": { "responder": "max", "planner": "", "worker": "max", "reviewer": "", "rework": "max", "fixer": "max" },
  "sandbox": {
    "confine_to_workdir": true,
    "restrict_bash": true,
    "no_network_tools": true
  },
  "pr_reviewers": [],
  "poll_interval": "10m",
  "agent_timeout": 600,
  "daily_budget_usd": 0,
  "budget_warn_at": 0.80,
  "quality_gate_fix_attempts": 1,
  "opencode_bin": "opencode"
}

• pr_reviewers is a list of GitHub usernames to request as reviewers on PRs the reviewer role opens (empty = no reviewer request).
• agent_timeout is the per-agent subprocess timeout in seconds.
• sandbox controls agent permissions; see Sandboxing.
• daily_budget_usd and budget_warn_at govern daily spend; see Cost tracking.
• quality_gate_fix_attempts is how many times the fixer role attempts to repair a failing quality gate (re-running the gate after each attempt) before the issue is sent back to the planner; 0 skips the fixer entirely. See Pipeline.

After editing models, prompts, variants, or sandbox settings, run cheaphelp agents sync to regenerate the opencode config.