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We use pydantic-settings with some custom functionality for configuring runs. We support the following sources, in this order of precedence:
  1. Command-line arguments: Pass (nested) arguments as --key.subkey value to the script. For example, to set the model name, set --model.name <model-name>
  2. Config files: You can pass TOML config files using the @ prefix. For example, to set a config, run uv run inference @ path/to/config.toml. (You have to leave a space between the @ and the config file)
  3. Environment variables: You can set environment variables to override the config values. All environment variables must be prefixed with PRIME_ and use the __ delimiter to nest the keys. For example, to set the model name you can run export PRIME_MODEL__NAME=Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B.
  4. Defaults: For almost all config arguments, we have a default value which will be used if no other source is provided.
In general we recommend setting configurations via config files to define reproducible experiments and use command-line arguments to override the config values to run variants of the same experiment. Environment variables are usually only used in production settings to communicate with the Prime Protocol worker. In most cases, you should not need to use environment variables. The precedence order will be important if multiple sources try to configure the same argument. For example, in the following command, all sources will define a model name 
# qwen8b.toml
[model]
name = "Qwen/Qwen3-8B"

# qwen14b.toml
[model]
name = "Qwen/Qwen-14B"

PRIME_MODEL__NAME=Qwen/Qwen3-4B uv run ... @ qwen8b.toml @ qwen14b.toml --model.name Qwen/Qwen3-32B
In this example, the CLI argument --model.name Qwen/Qwen3-32B will take precendence and the script will use Qwen/Qwen3-32B as the model name. If the CLI argument wasn’t set, then the second config file would take precedence and the script would use Qwen/Qwen-14B as the model name. If the second config file wasn’t set, then the first config file would take precedence and the script would use Qwen/Qwen3-8B as the model name. Finally, if the first config file wasn’t set, then the environment variable would take precedence and the script would use Qwen/Qwen-4B as the model name. If the environment variable wasn’t set, then the default value would be used and the script would use Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B as the model name.