CLI not reading config block directories or per-project configs

[bdeggleston]

I’m trying to setup continue.dev CLI with global and per-project configs using the yaml docs, and am having a hell of a time getting it working. It’s picking up ~/.continue/config.yaml and the models I’ve defined there no problem, but per-project configs (<project_dir>/.continue/config.yaml) or per-project agents (<project_dir>/.continue/agents/cassandra.yaml) seem to be completely ignored. I’m on the most recent version (1.4.38), and am not seeing any complaints in the debug logs. Any tips or tricks for getting this working properly?

[bdougie]

Hey @bdeggleston, sorry to hear of the issues. I can share my config that works with local models ollama.

If you don't mind sharing yours i'd be happy to help, I just need more information to understand.

note autodetect does not work currently and you need to be explicit in the models you'd like to use.

name: Continue Config
version: 0.0.1
context:
  - provider: diff
  - provider: currentFile
  - provider: docs
  - provider: terminal
  - provider: url
models:
  - name: qwen2.5-coder:14b
    provider: ollama
    model: qwen2.5-coder:14b
    roles:
      - chat
      - edit
      - apply
      - autocomplete
    capabilities:
      - tool_use
  - name: gpt-oss
    model: gpt-oss:20b
    provider: ollama
    roles:
      - chat
      - edit
      - apply
      - autocomplete
    capabilities:
      - tool_use
  - name: Autodetect
    provider: ollama
    model: AUTODETECT
    roles:
      - chat
      - edit
      - apply
      - rerank
      - autocomplete

[bdeggleston]

Ok I see, that makes more sense. I'd read this: https://docs.continue.dev/guides/cli#how-to-configure-continue-cli and interpreted it to mean that the entire configuration system for the CLI works the same as the plugin. Honestly I'm not familiar with the plugin and learned of continue.dev from the cli, so wasn't expecting there to be a gap, especially since it has a version >1.

Regarding use case, I'm trying to be able to compose configurations from global and per-project settings without having a bunch of duplicated configs. Different projects are able to use different models and have different rules, different languages need different mcp servers (and each project has different settings - etc).

[bdougie]

Honestly I'm not familiar with the plugin and learned of continue.dev from the cli, so wasn't expecting there to be a gap, especially since it has a version >1.

The CLI inherited the core continue code which was already > 1.

I'm trying to be able to compose configurations from global and per-project settings without having a bunch of duplicated configs. Different projects are able to use different models and have different rules, different languages need different mcp servers (and each project has different settings - etc).

This info is useful the team is discussing an approach internally.

[bdeggleston]

Makes sense. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss anything in more detail, my email address is on my github profile. Thanks for your help!

[bdeggleston]

Good news! I tried the VSCode plugin and the config system works better.
Bad news: usage of local blocks still doesn’t seem to match what is described in the docs.

This section of the yaml references (https://docs.continue.dev/reference#local-blocks ) indicates that if you define blocks in the relevant project or global config directories, you can then reference them by name in other config blocks. This does not seem to be the case. If I define a model in ~/.continue/models/corp-proxy.yml as

name: corp/proxy
version: 1.0.0
schema: v1

models:
  - name: corp/proxy
    model: "anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-20250514-v1:0"
    provider: ollama
    apiBase: "http://localhost:12345"
    roles:
      - chat
      - edit
      - apply

.. and then attempt to use it in an agent at ~/.continue/agents/corp-agent.yaml I've defined as:

name: SomeAgent
version: 1.0.0
schema: v1

models:
  - uses: corp/proxy

I then get an error message Block corp/proxy not found. > "corp/proxy"

What am I doing wrong here?

[Patrick-Erichsen]

Hey @bdeggleston , thanks for your patience trying to get this working.

The short answer is that the uses clause for a local block needs to be a path to the file that contains that block.

For me, this worked:

models:
  - uses: /Users/patrickerichsen/.continue/models/corp-proxy.yml

I realize this is not intuitive based on our docs, so I am working on improving that here: https://github.com/continuedev/continue/pull/new/pe/local-blocks-guide

---

The more detailed answer is that least for the extension, the behavior should be that any block defined in the global config (~/.continue), will be applied to every agent.

So in your case, if you're just looking to create a global model, you don't even need the models config in your SomeAgent agent.

For example, I've taken your ~/.continue/models/corp-proxy.yml and then created an empty agent with no model config at ~/.continue/agents/corp-agent.yaml , and I can see/use the corp/proxy model on that agent.

👾 ❯ cat ~/.continue/models/corp-proxy.yml 
name: corp/proxy
version: 1.0.0
schema: v1

models:
  - name: corp/proxy
    model: "anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-20250514-v1:0"
    provider: ollama
    apiBase: "http://localhost:12345"
    roles:
      - chat
      - edit
      - apply

remote-config-server on patrickerichsen/middleware 
👾 ❯ cat ~/.continue/agents/corp-agent.yaml 
name: SomeAgent
version: 1.0.0
schema: v1

(ignore the error triangle, that is unrelated)

[bdeggleston]

Yes I'd stumbled across that after posting and was hoping that wouldn't be the answer :). Unfortunately, it seems like only absolute paths work, ~ expansion doesn't work and relative paths don't work reliably. So local configs aren't really portable between users/environments. I don't think this is going to work out for the use case I'm looking at. Thanks for your time @bdougie & @Patrick-Erichsen, I appreciate your time and help.