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Configuration overview

There are exactly two places configuration lives. Knowing which is which removes most confusion.

flowchart LR
    subgraph ENV["Environment / backend/.env  (ZEROAI_*)"]
        E1[Database URL, CORS]
        E2["News limits: max items, timeout"]
        E3[LLM concurrency]
        E4["First-start defaults for the model"]
    end
    subgraph DB["SQLite  (edited in the UI)"]
        D1["Model: provider, name, base URL,<br/>API key, thinking mode"]
        D2[News sources]
        D3[Usage history]
    end
    E4 -.->|"seeds once,<br/>only if the row is missing"| D1
I want to change... Where Restart needed?
Model, API key, Ollama URL, thinking mode Settings page No, next summary
News sources Sources page No
Max simultaneous model calls ZEROAI_LLM_MAX_CONCURRENCY Yes
News timeout / max items ZEROAI_NEWS_* Yes
Database location, CORS origins ZEROAI_DATABASE_URL, ZEROAI_CORS_ORIGINS Yes

Why changing ZEROAI_OLLAMA_MODEL seems to do nothing

The model variables only seed the database the first time the API starts. After that the Settings page wins. To start over, delete the database file (see Data model).

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