Pace - Info.plist switch reference (local mode)

See SETUP_LOCAL.md for the full local-mode recipe. This is the canonical summary of the Info.plist switches that control local VLM / planner / TTS / transcription behavior; it was relocated here from the repository AGENTS.md to keep the agent-instructions file lean.

Always-On Companion Mode adds no Info.plist enable switch. Mode, camera, ambient-voice, screen, Mac-context, silent-card, and spoken-intervention choices are explicit default-off UserDefaults managed in Settings → Companion. Companion visual inference still honors LocalVLMBaseURL but validates it fail-closed as loopback-only; it never uses the selected cloud conversational tier. See companion-mode-privacy.md.

Ambient voice has no plist override for its classifier contract. The local Core ML runtime expects the app-bundled resource PaceWakeWordClassifier.mlmodelc with exact labels hey_pace and background. Missing or malformed assets fail closed before Speech.framework or the bounded post-wake conversation can start.

Key	Default	Effect when changed
`UseLocalVLMForScreenContext`	`true`	`false` to skip the VLM call and send the raw transcript to the planner.
`ScreenAnalysisProvider`	`lmStudio`	`inProcess` / `coreML` / `mlx` select the in-process VLM placeholder and currently fall back to LM Studio HTTP until the runtime bridge is wired.
`LocalVLMBaseURL`	`http://127.0.0.1:1234/v1`	OpenAI-compatible root for the local VLM. The numeric loopback avoids an IPv6-to-IPv4 retry delay. Remote/LAN hosts are refused.
`LocalVLMModelIdentifier`	`qwen/qwen3.5-4b`	Must match the model name loaded in LM Studio. The default shares one multimodal model with the planner to avoid model swaps.
`AlwaysRunLocalVLMRegardlessOfTranscript`	`false`	`true` → bypass the VLM-skip heuristic, run VLM on every turn
`LocalPlannerBaseURL`	`http://127.0.0.1:1234/v1`	OpenAI-compatible root for the local reasoner. The numeric loopback avoids an IPv6-to-IPv4 retry delay. Remote/LAN hosts are refused.
`LocalPlannerModelIdentifier`	`qwen/qwen3.5-4b`	Must match the model name loaded in LM Studio for the planner role. The default is the same fast multimodal model used for fallback vision; Gemma 3 12B and Qwen 30B remain optional quality-over-memory choices.
`EnableActions`	`true`	`false` → parse action tags but do not execute local macOS actions. Keep `Approve Risky Actions` on when this is true.
`AgentMaxSteps`	`8`	Per-task ceiling for the plan-act-observe loop. `1` disables multi-step (loop exits after first response).
`TTSProvider`	`apple`	`apple` uses `AVSpeechSynthesizer` with no sidecar. `localServer` opts into the Kokoro loopback service with automatic per-utterance Apple fallback.
`LocalTTSServerBaseURL`	`http://127.0.0.1:8880/v1`	Loopback-only OpenAI-compatible TTS root (mlx-audio / kokoro-fastapi). Used only when `TTSProvider=localServer`.
`LocalTTSServerModel`	`mlx-community/Kokoro-82M-bf16`	Model identifier the sidecar expects (`kokoro` for kokoro-fastapi).
`LocalTTSServerVoice`	`af_heart`	Kokoro voice name.
`LocalTTSServerSpeed`	`1.2`	Playback speed multiplier (0.25–4.0).
`PushToTalkShortcut`	`controlOption`	One of `controlOption`, `shiftFunction`, `shiftControl`, `controlOptionSpace`, `shiftControlSpace`. Swap if another global dictation tool (e.g. Wispr Flow) is on the same key.
`TranscriptionProvider`	`whisperKit`	Shipped default. Resolves to WhisperKit when the runtime is linked and its model is on disk, otherwise falls back to Apple Speech (`appleSpeech` / `apple` forces Apple Speech). When the key is unset the factory auto-prefers WhisperKit if the model is already installed.
`PrewarmMailForDrafts`	`false`	Shipped default. Set to any value other than `false`/`0`/`no` (or remove the key) to non-activating-launch Mail at Pace startup, avoiding Mail’s cold-launch tax for the streaming draft path.
`LocalRetrievalFileRootPaths`	empty	Optional comma/newline-separated explicit roots for file retrieval. With no roots, File retrieval records a skipped status and does not crawl the Mac.