Configuration

Where settings live

Alden merges three layers, later ones winning:

1. Built-in defaults.
2. Your user config: ~/.alden/config.toml (alden config path prints it).
3. The repo's config: .alden.toml at the root of the repo you run Alden from.

alden config set writes to your user config. Edit .alden.toml by hand to share settings with a team, for example sensitive paths. alden config list prints the merged result.

# ~/.alden/config.toml
[model]
name = "sonnet"
effort = "medium"

[budget]
perReviewUsd = 0.5
dailyUsd = 10

[queue]
fastTrackMaxLines = 50

model

See Models, providers and budgets.

budget

queue

queue.orgs, queue.repos and queue.ignore set what your queue covers on this machine, everywhere Alden shows it (the terminal, the web UI, the desktop app's menu and background briefings, and alden mcp): only your company's organisation on a work laptop, say, and only your own repos on a personal one. Set them in Settings → Your queue on this machine, or with alden config set queue.orgs "acme" (lists are comma-separated). --repo and --org override them for one run. A repo's .alden.toml can't set them.

[queue.rank] is how you rank: a weight per signal and your rules. Set it in Settings → Ranking, which previews your queue's top 5 before you save, with alden config set queue.rank.waiting 2, or by hand:

[queue.rank]
waiting = 2
learned = 0

[[queue.rank.rules]]
when = { path = "payments/" }
then = "first"

[[queue.rank.rules]]
when = { author = "bots" }
then = "last"

Each rule's when takes any of path, label, author (a login, or people, bots, agents), repo, base and title; then is first, last, boost or lower, with by for the points (default 5) and an optional name for the row. See Your ranking for what each weight is worth and how rules apply, and packages/schema/json/rank-settings.v1.json for the format. A repo's .alden.toml can't set them.

Default sensitive paths:

**/migrations/**      **/auth/**         **/payments/**      **/infra/**
.github/workflows/**  **/package-lock.json  **/pnpm-lock.yaml  **/yarn.lock
**/composer.lock      **/go.sum          **/poetry.lock

review

background

For the desktop app, which briefs your top PRs while you're away.

notifications

For the desktop app.

drafts

learning

stats

telemetry

clones

PR briefings find callers in a local clone of the PR's repo. Alden uses, in order: the clone it runs in, if it has a remote for that repo; the clone it last saw for that repo (Alden remembers every clone with a GitHub remote it runs in, and checks the folder is still there and still has that remote); then the first clone under clones.folders. So alden config set clones.folders "~/src" once is enough for the desktop app, alden ui or alden mcp started anywhere to find callers in every repo under ~/src.

updates

Environment variables

Files Alden keeps

Everything is under ~/.alden (or ALDEN_HOME):

Deleting any of these is safe, but deleting alden.db also deletes your feedback, notes and what Alden learned, and resets today's daily cap. Alden rebuilds everything else as needed.