Visor Configuration

All Visor settings live under the visor key in your sloppy.json configuration file. Every setting has a sensible default, so you only need to add fields you want to change.

{
  "visor": {
    "scheduler": {
      "enabled": true,
      "intervalSeconds": 300,
      "jitterSeconds": 60
    },
    "bootstrapBulletin": true,
    "bulletinMaxWords": 300,
    "model": null,
    "tickIntervalSeconds": 30,
    "workerTimeoutSeconds": 600,
    "branchTimeoutSeconds": 60,
    "maintenanceIntervalSeconds": 3600,
    "decayRatePerDay": 0.05,
    "pruneImportanceThreshold": 0.1,
    "pruneMinAgeDays": 30,
    "channelDegradedFailureCount": 3,
    "channelDegradedWindowSeconds": 600,
    "idleThresholdSeconds": 1800,
    "webhookURLs": [],
    "mergeEnabled": false,
    "mergeSimilarityThreshold": 0.80,
    "mergeMaxPerRun": 10
  }
}

Bulletin scheduler

These settings control how often Visor generates periodic bulletins.

Setting	Default	Description
visor.scheduler.enabled	true	Whether the periodic bulletin scheduler runs at all. Set to false to disable automatic bulletin generation; bulletins can still be generated on-demand.
visor.scheduler.intervalSeconds	300	How often (in seconds) the scheduler generates a new bulletin. Default is every 5 minutes.
visor.scheduler.jitterSeconds	60	A random amount of time (0 to this value) added to each interval. Prevents multiple instances from generating bulletins simultaneously.

Bulletin content

These settings control what goes into each bulletin and which model synthesizes it.

Setting	Default	Description
visor.bootstrapBulletin	true	Whether to generate an initial bulletin when Sloppy starts. Ensures agents have context from the very first message.
visor.bulletinMaxWords	300	Target word count for the LLM-synthesized bulletin digest. The model is instructed to stay near this limit.
visor.model	null	The model to use for bulletin synthesis, in the format "provider:model-id" (for example "openai:gpt-4o-mini"). When null, the default system model is used. If no model is available at all, Visor falls back to a plain-text summary.

Supervision tick

The supervision tick loop is the heartbeat of Visor's health monitoring. It runs continuously in the background.

Setting	Default	Description
visor.tickIntervalSeconds	30	How often (in seconds) the supervision loop runs. Each tick checks worker health, branch health, and channel signals.
visor.workerTimeoutSeconds	600	How long (in seconds) a worker may stay in a running or waiting state before Visor publishes a timeout event. Default is 10 minutes. Increase this for workers that legitimately take a long time.
visor.branchTimeoutSeconds	60	How long (in seconds) a branch may stay active before Visor force-concludes it. Branches are short-lived by design; keep this low.

Memory maintenance

Visor runs memory maintenance (decay, pruning, and optional merge) on a schedule separate from the supervision tick.

Setting	Default	Description
visor.maintenanceIntervalSeconds	3600	How often (in seconds) the maintenance pass runs. Default is once per hour.
visor.decayRatePerDay	0.05	The fraction of importance lost each day for non-identity memories. At 0.05, a memory at importance 1.0 will be at roughly 0.6 after 10 days. Set to 0 to disable decay.
visor.pruneImportanceThreshold	0.1	Memories with importance below this value become candidates for pruning. Only memories that also meet the minimum age requirement are actually removed.
visor.pruneMinAgeDays	30	A memory must be at least this many days old to be pruned, even if its importance is below the threshold. Protects recently created memories from early removal.

Channel health signals

These settings control when Visor decides that a channel is experiencing problems.

Setting	Default	Description
visor.channelDegradedFailureCount	3	The number of worker failures that must occur in one channel within the time window to trigger a "channel degraded" signal.
visor.channelDegradedWindowSeconds	600	The sliding time window (in seconds) used to count worker failures. Default is 10 minutes. Failures older than this window do not count.

Idle detection

Setting	Default	Description
visor.idleThresholdSeconds	1800	How many seconds of inactivity (no incoming messages) must pass before Visor emits an idle signal. Default is 30 minutes.

Webhooks

Visor can notify external systems when signals fire. Each URL receives an HTTP POST with the event payload in JSON.

Setting	Default	Description
visor.webhookURLs	[]	A list of URLs to call when any visor.signal.* event fires (visor.signal.channel_degraded or visor.signal.idle).

Example:

{
  "visor": {
    "webhookURLs": [
      "https://hooks.example.com/sloppy-alerts"
    ]
  }
}

Memory merge

Memory merge is an optional feature that consolidates similar memories over time. It is disabled by default because it requires a capable embedding or recall backend to work well.

Setting	Default	Description
visor.mergeEnabled	false	Whether the merge pass runs during maintenance.
visor.mergeSimilarityThreshold	0.80	The minimum recall similarity score (0 to 1) required to consider two memories as candidates for merging. Higher values mean only very close matches are merged.
visor.mergeMaxPerRun	10	The maximum number of merge operations performed in a single maintenance pass. Caps the amount of work done at once.

Only memories that are at least 1 day old are considered for merging. Bulletins and identity records are never merged.