General

The General tab is where the app-wide preferences live — settings that affect how Ishvana looks and behaves across every module, every project, and every session. It’s the tab most users visit once on first launch, pick a theme and a notification level, and never come back to. The settings here are simple by design. Each one has a clear name and a clear effect. You don’t need the manual to figure out what “dark theme” does or what “notifications: important only” means. But since this is the wiki, this page still documents them fully, because occasionally a user does want to know what the ranges are, what the defaults are, and what the downstream effects of each choice actually are.

Theme

Two options: Dark and Light. The choice applies app-wide, including the editor, panels, modals, and the sidebar. Every UI element has dark and light variants that are carefully matched, so the app doesn’t look like a different product under each theme.

Default: Dark.

The default is Dark because most serious writing sessions happen in the evening or at night, and a dark-themed editor is easier on the eyes during long sessions. If you prefer Light (some authors do — natural daylight readers, some with specific vision needs), switch it and it persists across sessions.

There is currently no “system theme” option that auto-switches based on your OS preference. The two explicit options are all there is. A system-following option may come in a future version; for now, you pick one and it stays.

Theme is cosmetic, not functional

Changing the theme doesn’t affect any features. It only changes the visual presentation. The editor still works the same, the agents still answer the same questions, the Legendry still stores the same data. If you’re worried that dark and light are somehow different products under the hood, they aren’t.

Notifications

Three levels controlling how often Ishvana surfaces notifications to you:

• All. Every notification shows up. Toast popups for save confirmations, session milestones, LLM completions, background task results, file change events — all of them. This level is noisy but comprehensive.
• Important (default). Only high-priority notifications. Errors, warnings, LLM failures, license issues, major state changes. Most users should leave it here.
• None. Zero notifications. Ishvana becomes completely silent. You won’t get visual confirmation of saves or any other event. Useful for authors who find notifications distracting and trust the app to do its job without feedback.

The level controls only the notification surface — the actual events still happen, they just don’t visibly notify you. “Notifications: None” doesn’t mean “disable background tasks,” it means “don’t tell me about them unless I explicitly go look.”

Analytics

A toggle: Track writing sessions & goals (on/off).

When on, the analytics subsystem runs continuously in the background, tracking your session start times, word counts added, session durations, streaks, and goal progress. The data feeds the Writing Stats panel in Editorial Analysis — without it, the panel is empty.

When off, no session tracking happens. No data is collected, nothing is written to the analytics database, and the Writing Stats panel shows “analytics disabled.”

Default: On.

The default is on because session analytics are genuinely useful for most authors (knowing your cadence is the first question of the three-phase editorial workflow), and the cost is minimal — a few database writes per minute during active editing, all local, no network calls. The only reason to turn it off is privacy concern or deliberate minimalism, and if you want to turn it off, you can.

Analytics is local-only

Nothing in analytics leaves your machine. No telemetry, no uploads, no cloud syncing. The data lives in your SQLite database in the data directory and nowhere else. Disabling it is a preference, not a privacy escape hatch — there’s nothing to escape from.

Language

The interface language for the Ishvana UI. Currently Ishvana ships with English only. Future versions may add localization for other languages, but as of this version, the language setting is a stub.

The setting exists as a placeholder so that when localization lands, existing configurations will continue to work and users will see their language reflected without a migration.

What else might belong here

A few things that aren’t on this tab today but might reasonably show up in future versions:

• Keyboard shortcuts. Most keyboard shortcuts are currently hardcoded. A future version might let you customize them per action.
• Startup behavior. What Ishvana does when you open it — empty state vs. last session vs. specific project. Currently the default is “restore last session” and isn’t configurable.
• Autocomplete. Whether the editor’s autocomplete is on, and what it suggests. Currently on with sensible defaults; not configurable.
• Confirmation prompts. Whether destructive actions (deleting a document, deleting a lore entry) prompt for confirmation. Currently always prompts; not configurable.

None of these are currently user-facing, but they’re the natural next places for the General tab to grow.

What’s not on this tab

A few things that might seem like they should be in General but aren’t:

• Editor behavior (auto-save, spell check, content width) — that’s on the Editor tab.
• Model provider credentials — those are on the Models tab.
• Email account configuration — Email Accounts tab.
• Performance tuning — Performance & Hardware tab.
• License activation — Licensing tab.

Each of those has its own dedicated tab because the configuration is complex enough to warrant its own surface. The General tab is specifically for the simple global preferences that don’t need their own dedicated space.

What’s next

Editor Auto-save, spell check, and editor-specific preferences.

Models Configuring model providers and tiers.

Performance & Hardware Hardware tier detection and performance tuning.