Wattetheria Brain Provider Setup and Configuration

The brain provider is the reasoning backend that Wattetheria’s autonomous loop consults when deciding what actions agents should take next. You select a provider by setting the kind field inside the brain_provider object in your config.json. Three providers are available out of the box, covering everything from fully deterministic operation to cloud-scale LLM inference.

Provider Overview

rules
ollama
openai-compatible

The rules provider uses a built-in, deterministic decision engine — no LLM is required. It is the fastest way to get the runtime running and is well-suited for environments where you want predictable, auditable behaviour without any external model dependency.

{
  "brain_provider": {
    "kind": "rules"
  }
}

Because rules makes no network calls, it works fully offline and requires no additional credentials or services.

The ollama provider connects to a locally-running Ollama instance. This is the recommended choice for developers who want full local inference without sending data to a third-party API.The base_url and model fields are both required alongside kind.

{
  "brain_provider": {
    "kind": "ollama",
    "base_url": "http://127.0.0.1:11434",
    "model": "qwen2.5:7b-instruct"
  }
}

qwen2.5:7b-instruct offers a strong balance of reasoning quality and inference speed on consumer hardware. Pull it with ollama pull qwen2.5:7b-instruct before starting the runtime.

The openai-compatible provider works with any API that exposes an OpenAI-style /v1 surface — including LiteLLM, vLLM, OpenRouter, and direct OpenAI or Anthropic proxies.The base_url and model fields are required. The optional api_key_env field names the environment variable that holds your API key (the key value itself is never written to config.json).

{
  "brain_provider": {
    "kind": "openai-compatible",
    "base_url": "http://127.0.0.1:4000/v1",
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "api_key_env": "WATTETHERIA_BRAIN_API_KEY"
  },
  "autonomy_enabled": true,
  "autonomy_interval_sec": 30
}

Set the corresponding environment variable before starting the stack:

export WATTETHERIA_BRAIN_API_KEY="sk-..."

Configuration Schema

All brain provider configurations share a common shape. The table below lists every supported field.

Field	Required for	Type	Description
`kind`	all	`string`	Provider type: `rules`, `ollama`, or `openai-compatible`
`base_url`	`ollama`, `openai-compatible`	`string`	Base URL of the inference API
`model`	`ollama`, `openai-compatible`	`string`	Model identifier to request
`api_key_env`	`openai-compatible`	`string`	Name of the env var that holds the API key

Do not place your actual API key value inside config.json. Use api_key_env to reference an environment variable name instead. This keeps credentials out of version control and out of the state directory.

Using a Docker-Hosted Brain Provider

When the Wattetheria stack runs inside Docker and your AI gateway or Ollama instance is a process on the host machine, you must use Docker’s special hostname in place of localhost or 127.0.0.1:

{
  "brain_provider": {
    "kind": "ollama",
    "base_url": "http://host.docker.internal:11434",
    "model": "qwen2.5:7b-instruct"
  }
}

host.docker.internal resolves automatically on Docker Desktop (macOS and Windows). On Linux, add extra_hosts: ["host.docker.internal:host-gateway"] to the relevant service in your Compose file.

Using the Supervision Console

You do not have to edit config.json by hand to change the brain provider. The supervision console at http://127.0.0.1:7777/supervision includes a dedicated UI card for this purpose. Changes made through the console are written directly to the deploy .env file and take effect on the next restart — no file editing required.

Validating the Brain Provider

After any change to the brain provider — whether via config.json, the .env, or the supervision console — run the diagnostics command to confirm that the runtime can reach the model and that agent attach status is current:

npx wattetheria doctor --brain --connect

CLI Brain Commands

The wattetheria brain sub-command lets you invoke the brain provider directly from the command line for testing and introspection. Both commands operate against the runtime state directory. Use propose-actions to ask the brain to generate a set of candidate agent actions based on current runtime state:

npx wattetheria brain --data-dir ./data/wattetheria propose-actions

Use humanize-night-shift to produce a human-readable summary of agent activity over a given time window (in hours):

npx wattetheria brain --data-dir ./data/wattetheria humanize-night-shift --hours 24

Run humanize-night-shift after leaving the autonomous loop running overnight to get a plain-language digest of what your agents did while you were away.

​Provider Overview

​Configuration Schema

​Using a Docker-Hosted Brain Provider

​Using the Supervision Console

​Validating the Brain Provider

​CLI Brain Commands

Provider Overview

Configuration Schema

Using a Docker-Hosted Brain Provider

Using the Supervision Console

Validating the Brain Provider

CLI Brain Commands