Skip to main content

Settings

Phlox is configured almost entirely through the in-app Settings page. Configuration lives in the encrypted database (not in files), so changes persist with your data. Most settings autosave.

Settings is divided into three top-level panels: User Settings, Model Settings, and Prompt Settings.

Settings pageSettings page

User Settings​

TabWhat you configure
GeneralYour name and specialty (provided as context to the LLM and used for specialty-aware suggestions); your default note template and default letter template.
Note TemplatesCreate, edit, and delete note templates.
Letter TemplatesManage correspondence templates, including the protected "Dictation" template.
Quick ChatConfigure up to three quick-chat buttons (label + prompt) shown in the chat surfaces.
AdvancedStore Original PDFs (keep uploaded PDF binaries) and Require patient consent for ambient scribing (see Patients).

Model Settings​

The Model Settings panel behaves differently depending on whether you run a desktop (Tauri) build or a Docker/web build.

Local mode (desktop only)​

On desktop you can run inference locally. The panel toggles between Local and Remote inference.

  • Models tab — download and manage the bundled models: the primary AI model (with smart recommendations based on your RAM/cores, plus an estimated processing time), the transcription model (Omi Med STT v1), and the optional embeddings model (Qwen3-Embedding) used for RAG. A system-specs banner shows your available RAM and CPU cores, and a "Reset All Models" action is available.

Local Model ManagerLocal Model Manager

  • Tools tab — see Tools below.

Remote mode​

When using external endpoints (required for Docker; optional on desktop):

  • Whisper tab — transcription API base URL, model name, and API key. A live status indicator shows endpoint reachability.
  • LLM tab — OpenAI-compatible / Ollama base URL, API key, primary model, secondary model, the document/image processing mode, and a vision capability probe.
  • RAG tab — choose the embedding model. Changing it triggers a re-embedding pass across all document collections, with a progress indicator.
  • Tools tab — see Tools below.

Document and Image Processing Mode​

Controls how uploaded PDFs and images are processed for notes, demographics, and document chat:

  • Auto (default) — probes the model for vision support and uses vision if available, falling back to text extraction then OCR.
  • Vision only — always sends page images to the vision model. Requires a vision-capable model.
  • OCR only — text extraction (pypdf) with Tesseract OCR fallback. Works with any model but may miss content in scanned documents or images.

In desktop (local) builds, vision is enabled automatically when a multimodal projector (mmproj) file is present alongside the model.

Vision Capability Probe​

The Test Vision Support button sends a tiny test image to the configured model and reports whether it is vision-capable. The result is cached per provider/URL/model and shown as a badge (Vision capable / Not vision-capable / Unknown, with source and timestamp).

Tools​

The Tools tab controls the agentic tool-calling system.

Built-in Tools​

Toggle each built-in tool on or off. Tools that call external services are flagged and ship off by default:

  • Transcript Search, Literature Search, Previous Encounters, Patient Search, Search by Condition, Patient Note Search, Patient Jobs, Outstanding Jobs, Job Completion, Note Creation, Todo List, PDF form tools
  • ⚠️ PubMed Search and Wikipedia Search — disabled by default (external; may transmit PHI)

Tool Servers (MCP)​

Connect external tool servers via the Model Context Protocol (SSE transport):

  1. Click Add Server and provide a name and HTTP URL.
  2. Optionally enable Allow sensitive data (PHI) per server. When off (the default), Phlox strips identifying information from arguments before calling the server. See Security → Tool & MCP data safety.
  3. Test connection to verify reachability and discover the server's tools.
  4. Toggle the server on/off as needed.

Discovered MCP tools appear alongside the built-in tools in chat.

Prompt Settings​

Power users can customise the system prompts Phlox sends to the LLM:

  • Refinement, Summary, Chat, Letter — editable system-prompt text areas, each with a reset-to-default.
  • Advanced — num_ctx for the primary and secondary models, and the letter temperature.

A warning in this panel reminds you that the defaults are carefully tuned. Change them only if you understand the impact on output quality.