Agent & model

The agent is the persona; the model is the brain. You pick both the same way you pick everything else in the TUI — a keyboard shortcut for the dialog or a slash command when you already know the name.

Switching agents

Press Ctrl+A to open the agent dialog. It lists every agent the current runtime has loaded, with the capability it came from and its model override (if any).

Highlight an agent and hit Enter to switch. If a session is active the conversation continues on it — no new thread, no lost history, the new persona takes effect from the next turn. If no session is active, the dialog starts one with the chosen agent.

Slash equivalents

Command	What it does
/agents	Print the agent list into the conversation
/agent <name>	Switch the session’s active agent to <name>

The default agent is always present, even when no capabilities are loaded. Other agents appear after you install a capability that ships one.

Routing one message to a different agent

Typing @ in the composer opens an agent picker. Select one (Tab or Enter), keep typing, and submit — the composer sends @agent message..., which routes that single message without changing the session’s active agent:

@web-pentester take a look at the /admin endpoints

Ctrl+A is for permanent switches; @mention is for one-offs.

Note

If the agent you want is not in the list, the capability probably has not finished loading yet. Open the capabilities screen (Ctrl+P) to see load status and error messages.

Choosing a model

Press Ctrl+K to open the inline model picker. It lists models grouped by provider, with Dreadnode platform-hosted models first and your BYOK models below.

Platform-hosted models bill against your Dreadnode credits. BYOK models use the keys you configured — see Authentication for the environment variables. To change the shortlist that appears in the picker, use Chat models in settings.

Slash equivalents

Command	What it does
/model	Print the active model into the conversation
/model <id>	Switch to <id> (e.g. openai/gpt-5)
/models	Open the full-screen model browser

Use /models when you want to search by name, filter by provider, or see every model the platform offers. The inline picker (Ctrl+K) is faster when you know what you want.

Per-agent model overrides

A capability can pin a model on one of its agents — shown in the agent dialog after the description. When you switch to that agent, its model override takes over until you change it with Ctrl+K or /model. Your override wins and sticks for the rest of the session.

Tuning thinking effort

Models in the Claude, GPT, and Gemini families expose extended-thinking modes. Press Ctrl+Shift+K to cycle through them for the active model:

Provider	Levels
Anthropic	low, medium, high, max
OpenAI	low, medium, high
Gemini	high, max

Each press advances to the next level, and one more press past max turns thinking off entirely. The context bar shows the current level next to the model name.

Slash equivalents

Command	What it does
/thinking	Print the active level
/thinking on	Enable thinking at the provider’s lowest level
/thinking off	Disable thinking
/thinking <level>	Set a specific level (e.g. high)
/thinking show	Show thinking blocks in the conversation
/thinking hide	Hide thinking blocks (kept, just collapsed)

Higher effort costs more tokens and takes longer. Start at low or medium for day-to-day work; escalate to high or max when the agent is stuck or the task is genuinely hard.

What persists across sessions

• The agent you selected carries into new sessions until you pick a different one.
• The model carries the same way. A fresh install starts on anthropic/claude-opus-4-6.
• Thinking effort is remembered per model, so flipping between models does not lose your tuning.

If you need to inspect or change the stored values outside the TUI, the profile config in ~/.dreadnode/ is where they live.