Edit the profile

Goal: change a value in the shared profile and push it into every harness you have installed.

Prerequisites

• The apothem CLI on your PATH (or the self-contained form: prefix with PYTHONPATH="$HOME/.apothem/src" and run python -m apothem, or use npx @ahmed-g-gad/apothem).
• A profile at ~/.config/apothem/profile.yaml. Create one with apothem profile init if it is missing.

The profile shape

The profile is a single YAML document. Its top-level keys:

• identity (required) — name, plus optional role, email, website, github.
• preferences — language, style (concise / verbose / balanced), formatter, test_framework.
• rules — a list of extra rule strings shared with capable harnesses.
• seriousness — one of EXPLORING, PERSONAL_USE, SHARED, PUBLIC_LAUNCH.
• enforcement — opt-in toggles (sprints, agent_teams, multitasking, continuous_execution, learning_loop), every flag default-off.
• harnesses — per-harness overrides keyed by harness id.
• exclude_harnesses — harness ids skipped by batch (--harness all) commands.

Steps

1. Inspect the current profile:

   apothem profile show

2. Edit it. Open it in your system editor:

   apothem profile edit

   Or set a single dotted key from the command line. The value is stored literally (except true/false and explicit [..]/{..} input, which are parsed) and the profile is validated against the schema before writing — an invalid set is refused and the profile on disk is unchanged:

   apothem profile set seriousness SHARED
   apothem profile set identity.name "Ada Lovelace"

3. Re-materialize the harnesses so the change reaches their native config. For a user-scope harness:

   apothem update --harness claude-code

   For a project-scope harness, pass the project root; use all to refresh every installed harness:

   apothem update --harness cursor --project /path/to/project
   apothem update --harness all --project /path/to/project

Verify

apothem profile show
apothem verify --harness all

profile show reflects your edit; verify confirms the materialized config matches the updated profile.

Related

• Add a harness to bring a new harness under profile control before re-materializing.
• Updating covers upgrading the engine alongside the re-materialize step.