Firebender can be configured at both the project and personal levels. This flexibility allows you to define project-specific settings while maintaining your personal preferences across all projects.

Project Rules

Stored in your project’s root directory, version-controlled and scoped to your project.

Location: $projectRoot/firebender.json

Personal Rules

Stored in your home directory, accessed through your IDE settings and scoped to all projects.

Location: ~/.firebender/firebender.json

When both configurations exist, rules, ignore patterns, and MCP server configurations from both files are appended together. For the mcpEnvFile setting specifically, the project configuration takes precedence.

Accessing Configurations

Project Configuration

Create or edit firebender.json in your project root directory using any text editor.

Personal Configuration

You can access your personal configuration through Firebender Settings:

  1. Go to Firebender Settings
  2. Click the “Open Personal Rules File” button
  1. If the file doesn’t exist, it will be created with default template content

Configuration Structure

Both configuration files use the same JSON structure and support the same fields:

{
  "rules": [
    "string rule",
    {
      "filePathMatches": "glob/pattern",
      "rules": ["rule1", "rule2"]
    }
  ],
  "ignore": [
    "glob/pattern1",
    "glob/pattern2"
  ],
  "mcpServers": {
    "serverName": {
      "command": "executable",
      "args": ["arg1", "arg2"],
      "env": {"KEY": "VALUE"}
    }
  },
  "mcpEnvFile": "path/to/env/file"
}

How Configurations Are Merged

When both project and personal configurations exist, Firebender merges them using these rules:

  1. Rules: All rules from both files are collected and applied
  2. Ignore patterns: All patterns from both files are combined
  3. MCP servers: Server configurations from both files are appended together
  4. mcpEnvFile: The project configuration takes precedence for this setting