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Course outline

AcademyModule 7 · Controls and connections

Settings, plans, and workspace sharing

Lesson 3 of 312 min

What you'll learn

  • You can open Settings from anywhere and find the right one of its nine categories
  • You can tune theme, typography, and interface language, with a live preview before anything applies
  • You can choose the chat model and the "Extraction model" preset that builds your knowledge graph, and you know that preset stays put
  • You can read the two usage meters, tell plan credits from usage credits, and recover from a "Usage limit reached" dialog
  • You can export a workspace as a portable .zip bundle or an expiring share link

Use Settings to manage fonts and language, AI models and permissions, plans, and usage. To send a workspace to someone else, open the sharing dialog from the same titlebar menu.

This lesson covers the nine settings categories, the two kinds of credits, and workspace sharing.

How Settings is organized

Three ways in. Press ⌘, (Ctrl+, on Windows) — that accelerator belongs to the native menu item Consilience ▸ "Settings…", so the menu bar is the same door, not a fourth one. Or click the workspace name at the far left of the titlebar and pick "Settings" from the dropdown. Or open the global search palette with ⌘⇧F and type "Settings"; every category except "Appshots" has its own entry there too, so you can jump straight to one.

It opens as a regular tab titled "Settings", and it's a singleton: reopen it and the existing tab comes back into focus instead of stacking duplicates. While that tab is active, the left sidebar becomes a nine-item settings menu.

CategoryWhat lives there
"Account""Your sign-in, plan, usage limits, and billing." Plus your shared links.
"General"Interface language, software updates, chat history, reset
"Appearance"Theme mode, Liquid Glass (macOS), typography
"Shortcuts"Rebindable app shortcuts, the global appshot hotkey, read-only system-menu chips
"AI"Model pickers, the automation switches, code intelligence
"Appshots"Capture a window into chat. macOS and Windows only.
"Data"Stored data per workspace, embedding-pool reclaim, database compaction
"Permissions"Default permission mode, capability switches, saved permission rules
"Feedback"A report form that goes straight to the Consilience team

Make it yours: appearance and language

The Appearance tab is small but packed. "Theme mode" is a three-way switch: System, Light, or Dark. On macOS, a "Liquid Glass" toggle turns the frosted, see-through look of the window itself on or off.

Under "Typography" sit four controls:

  • "Font family": System, Geist, Helvetica, Serif, Georgia, or Monospace, each drawn in its own face.
  • "Font size": 12–24 px, default 16.
  • "Line height": 1.0–2.5, default 1.7.
  • "Readable width": 30–80 rem, default 46.

Hover or focus any of them and a live preview tooltip pops up: a fully rendered sample document with prose, quotes, tables, math, and code. You see every setting applied before you commit. The "Reset" button in the section header lights up only when something differs from the defaults.

The General tab holds "Interface language", which offers "Follow system" plus English, 한국어, Español, Français, Deutsch, 日本語, and 中文. Next to it are "Check for updates" and an "Automatic updates" switch.

Two actions here are destructive, and both say how far they reach. "Clear history" deletes saved AI chats from this device, and "Reset all app data" wipes chats, recents, settings, and indexes. Both dialogs are clear about one thing: your Markdown files on disk are never touched.

Tune your reading experience with the live preview

  1. Press ⌘, (Ctrl+, on Windows) and pick "Appearance" in the settings sidebar.
  2. Under "Typography", hover the "Font size" stepper. A live preview tooltip appears, rendering a sample document ("Quantum Decoherence") with prose, quotes, tables, math, and code.
  3. Adjust "Font family", "Line height", and "Readable width" while watching the preview update. You can move the pointer into the tooltip and scroll it.
  4. Overshot? Click "Reset" in the Typography header. It's enabled only when a value differs from the defaults.

The whole workspace re-renders with your typography, so you never apply a setting blind.

What the AI uses, and what it may do

The AI tab opens with two pickers that answer different questions. "Default AI model" sets which model the assistant reaches for at the start of each new run, and it's the same choice as the model picker in the chat composer. The catalog lists frontier models from the leading AI labs, each shown as "Label · Provider", with a strong default already picked.

"Extraction model" is separate: a two-way preset for the AI that turns your notes into the knowledge graph. You pick "Cost-first" (the default) or "Quality-first", which reads every note more deeply and pulls out more accurate relationships.

  • "Automatic knowledge-graph extraction" reads and links your notes in the background every time you save. Its parallel speed self-tunes to your usage limits.
  • "Surface notes about the same idea" suggests related notes by meaning, even when they share no words.
  • "Capture your decisions and questions" pulls out statements verbatim, so "what did I decide about pricing?" stays answerable later.
  • "Add suggested connections automatically" applies suggested typed links on its own. Merges always wait for your OK.
  • "Rebuild knowledge graph" gives you a "Rebuild" action that re-extracts every note with the latest logic, in the background.
  • "Code intelligence" and "Cloud semantic code search" build a local map of your source code for the agent, with an optional cloud embedding step on top. You're asked to confirm once before any code leaves your machine, and turning it off keeps everything on-device.

Backfill your older notes with Rebuild

"Surface notes about the same idea" and "Capture your decisions and questions" only apply to future saves. But one press of "Rebuild" under "Rebuild knowledge graph" sweeps in every existing note too, re-extracting your whole workspace in the background.

The Permissions tab separates what the AI knows from what it may do. "Default permission mode" sets how new chats start, using the same four modes as the composer badge, and each chat can still change its own mode from there. The picker keeps its warning about "Full access" in plain view: use it only in workspaces you trust.

Below it are two capability switches. "Let the AI run commands" covers sandboxed shell execution: read-only commands run on their own, risky ones ask first. "Let the AI use your computer" covers the screen plus mouse and keyboard: looking runs on its own, while clicking and typing ask once per task.

Once you've clicked "always allow" on an approval card, a "Permission rules" section appears with every saved rule. Each rule has its own "Remove" button, and "Clear all rules" makes the agent start asking again everywhere.

Plans, meters, and the two kinds of credits

Everything about billing lives in the Account tab. Signed out, it offers "Continue with Google" or an email one-time code: choose "Email me a code" and a 6-digit code arrives that verifies itself the instant you finish typing it. Signed in, you get your account card, a "My plan" section, and the usage meters.

The four plans (Free, Plus, Pro, and Ultra) differ only in usage limits. There's no feature gating, so a Free account sees the same app as an Ultra one, just with a smaller allowance.

PlanPitch in the plan picker
Free"Try out AI features at a light pace."
Plus"Plenty for everyday note-taking and agent use." Eligible first-timers see a "First month free" badge.
Pro"Built for heavy, all-day agent work, with early access to advanced features."
Ultra"Top limits for power users, with early access and priority support."
EnterpriseAn on-prem or dedicated install, with a contact link instead of self-serve checkout.

Your allowance is measured in credits. A credit is a token weighted by each model's cost, so heavier models cost more per token.

Every plan carries two rolling windows, shown as meters under "AI usage": a "5-hour limit" and a "Weekly limit", each with its own reset time and a used-versus-cap count. Two things to know:

  • The bars fill with what you've used, so a full bar means you're out.
  • Because the windows roll, usage frees up bit by bit as older activity ages out, and you can often keep going before the reset time shown.

The meters refresh every 20 seconds while the tab is open. Below them, "Usage credits" is your overage wallet: "Keep working past your plan's limit by drawing on prepaid credit." Flip "Use credits past the limit" on, check your "Current balance", and top up with "Buy credits".

Presets of $50, $250, or $1,000 carry 10, 20, and 30% discounts, and a custom amount runs $5–$5,000. A "Monthly spending limit" caps what the wallet can spend each month, and "Auto-recharge" refills it from your card whenever it dips below a threshold you set.

Checkout, plan changes, the customer portal, and invoices all run through Paddle in your system browser. Paid-to-paid changes happen in place, and the confirm dialog shows the exact prorated charge or credit before you commit. To step down to Free, use "Downgrade in Manage subscription" in the plan picker; it hands off to the Paddle portal.

Plan credits
Your included allowance. Usage is counted as tokens weighted by each model's cost, and heavier models cost more per token.
Rolling window
The "5-hour limit" and "Weekly limit" free up continuously as older activity ages out. There's no calendar-day reset.
Usage credits
A prepaid USD wallet for working past a plan cap. Spent only after a cap is hit and "Use credits past the limit" is on.
Extraction model
A saved cost-vs-quality preset for the model that builds your knowledge graph. It's separate from the chat model.
Share bundle
A portable .zip of a workspace. Content files are always included; graph layers like graph.nq are opt-in.

Two different things are called "credits"

Plan credits are your included allowance, the two meters under "AI usage". Every plan has them, and they refill on their own as the windows roll.

Usage credits are prepaid overage money, the USD balance under "Usage credits". They're spent only after a meter fills up, and only while "Use credits past the limit" is switched on.

Buying usage credits never raises your plan meters, and upgrading your plan never adds to the wallet.

Recover from "Usage limit reached"

  1. Read the dialog

    It names the exhausted window ("5-hour limit" or "Weekly limit"), when it resets, and your used-versus-cap count.

  2. Option A: wait

    Both windows roll, so usage frees up gradually as older activity ages out. You can often continue before the full reset time arrives.

  3. Option B: click a CTA

    "Upgrade plan", "Turn on usage credits", "Buy credits", or "Adjust limit": each one drops you into Settings → Account with the right control already open. Eligible free users see a "Start Plus free month" button instead.

  4. Extraction blocked? Do nothing

    The dialog says it outright: the remaining sources finish on their own once your limit resets, so there's nothing you need to do.

Export a workspace copy

The last stop is outside Settings, but in the same menu: "Share", one row under "Settings" in the titlebar workspace dropdown. Its "Send a copy" section packs your workspace into a portable bundle the recipient opens on their own machine. Your content files always come along; everything else is an opt-in checkbox, all selected by default:

  • Knowledge graph ships "Entities, synonyms, relationships and topics (graph.nq)." The recipient gets your whole graph with no re-extraction and no AI cost.
  • Topic map, Domain vocabulary, Relationship proposals, Merge decisions carry your curation work along, including the same-versus-distinct calls that keep split merges split.
  • Agent memory is the agent's persistent notes about this workspace.
  • Semantic search embeddings make search work instantly on import, but this is the largest section. Leave it off to shrink the bundle, since it rebuilds on import anyway.
  • Code intelligence shows up only when the workspace actually has a code graph.

"Save bundle…" writes a local file named <name>.consilience-share.zip with no size limit. "Create link" instead uploads the bundle to a hosted, expiring download link, capped at 5 GB. The dialog is clear: anyone with the link can download it until the expiry date, and "Stop sharing" revokes it early.

Every active link also shows up in Settings → Account under "Shared links", each row with a red "Stop sharing" button. On the receiving end: the titlebar workspace dropdown → "Import shared workspace". File ▸ "Import Workspace…" does the same thing, and so does "Import shared workspace" on the "Open a workspace to get started" panel a machine with no workspace open shows. Pick the .zip and a destination folder, and the workspace opens with its graph and curation restored.

That's the control room: one singleton tab, never more than ⌘, away, plus a Share dialog that turns a workspace into something you can hand to a colleague. With the dials set, the next lesson opens your workspace to the outside world, where live data keeps flowing into the graph on its own.

Settings, plans, and workspace sharing