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.

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Accessing Configurations

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Project Configuration

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

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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

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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"
}

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Path Resolution

When specifying paths in your configuration (such as in rulesPaths or mcpEnvFile), Firebender resolves relative paths based on the location of the corresponding configuration file:

  • Project configuration: Relative paths are resolved from your project’s root directory
  • Personal configuration: Relative paths are resolved from the ~/.firebender directory

This allows you to reference files relative to their appropriate context, whether in your project or in your personal configuration directory.

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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