Reference
Configuration
Configuration comes from three places, resolved in order: command-line flags, then environment variables, then equilibrium.toml, then built-in defaults. Anything you don’t set falls through to the next source.
equilibrium.toml
Placed at the project root, or pointed to explicitly with --config.
[api]
key = "${EQUILIBRIUM_API_KEY}"
[defaults]
seed = 20260801
output_dir = "./equilibrium-runs"
cache_dir = "~/.cache/equilibrium"
[mcp]
port = 8420The ${EQUILIBRIUM_API_KEY} syntax pulls from the environment rather than storing the key in the file directly — equilibrium.toml is typically committed to a repository, and the API key should not be.
Environment variables
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
EQUILIBRIUM_API_KEY | API key for a self-hosted MCP server instance; see authentication |
EQUILIBRIUM_SEED | Default seed used when --seed isn’t passed to equilibrium generate |
EQUILIBRIUM_OUTPUT_DIR | Where generated samples and manifests are written |
EQUILIBRIUM_CACHE_DIR | Where downloaded calibration targets and registry metadata are cached locally |
Defaults if nothing is set
With no config file and no environment variables, output_dir defaults to ./equilibrium-runs in the current working directory, cache_dir defaults to a platform-standard cache location, and no default seed is set — equilibrium generate will refuse to run without an explicit seed unless one is configured, since an unrecorded implicit seed would break the reproducibility a provenance manifest is meant to guarantee.