Cortex Code CLI Settings¶

Cortex Code CLI settings control tool permissions, connections, and session behavior. You can configure settings using managed policy (if provided by your organization), configuration files, environment variables, and command-line arguments.

Configuration files¶

The following configuration files are used by Cortex Code CLI:

The full layout of the main configuration directory is:

~/.snowflake/cortex/        # Main Cortex Code CLI config directory
├── settings.json          # Main settings
├── mcp.json               # MCP server configs
├── permissions.json       # Saved permissions
├── hooks.json             # Global hooks
├── history                # Command history
├── conversations/         # Session files
├── cache/                 # Temporary cache
│   ├── table_cache.json   # SQL result metadata
│   └── sql_result_cache/  # Parquet files
├── logs/                  # Log files
├── memory/                # Persistent memory
├── agents/                # Custom agents
├── skills/                # Global skills
├── commands/              # Custom commands
├── hooks/                 # Hook scripts
└── remote_cache/          # Cloned repos

Settings precedence¶

Settings are applied in the following order of precedence (highest to lowest):

1. Managed settings restrictions (settings.* fields in managed-settings.json). Can’t be overridden by any user-level configuration. See .
2. Profile overrides (settingsOverrides from the active profile, if any).
3. Project settings (.cortex/settings.json or .claude/settings.json in the working directory).
4. Managed settings defaults (defaults.* fields in managed-settings.json). Users can override these in their own settings.json.
5. Global user settings (~/.snowflake/cortex/settings.json).
6. Default values embedded in the Cortex Code CLI.

Permissions follow a separate evaluation order. See Permission evaluation.

settings.json¶

~/.snowflake/cortex/settings.json

Main settings file for Cortex Code CLI.

Example content:

{
   "compactMode": true,
   "autoUpdate": true,
   "theme": "dark"
}

The following settings are available:

• compactMode: Enables compact output formatting.
• autoUpdate: Enables automatic updates.
• theme: Sets the CLI theme (light or dark).

permissions.json¶

~/.snowflake/cortex/permissions.json

Controls tool access permissions.

Example content:

{
  "onlyAllow": ["read_file", "execute_sql"],
  "defaultMode": "ask",
  "dangerouslyAllowAll": false
}

The following settings are available:

• onlyAllow: List of allowed tool patterns.
• defaultMode: Default permission mode (ask, allow, deny).
• dangerouslyAllowAll: Allows all tools without prompts (unsafe).

Managed settings (organization policy)¶

Administrators can deploy a system-level JSON policy file to enforce Cortex Code CLI behavior across an organization, restricting tools, accounts, and minimum versions. For details, see Managed settings (organization policy).

Environment variables¶

Cortex Code CLI recognizes the following configuration environment variables:

Command-line overrides¶

Cortex Code CLI settings can be overridden via command-line arguments, which include the following:

Session storage¶

Conversations and settings are stored in: