Features and what they need

Always onChat, projects, groups, accounts

You turn onLibrary, workspaces, clusters

Turn it onEnvironment variables, then restart

Chat starts with conversations, projects and accounts. Everything that needs more infrastructure stays off until you configure it, and its pages and buttons are hidden rather than shown empty.

At a glance

Feature	Needs	Turn it on	While it's off
Conversations, history, presets	Postgres	Always on	—
Answers from models	The obleth gateway	Connect the gateway	The composer says no models are available
Single sign-on	An OIDC provider	`OBLETH_CHAT_OIDC_ISSUER` and client, see Accounts	Username and password only
Projects and groups	Postgres	Always on	—
Library: Saved, Collections, Generated	An S3 bucket, pgvector, an embedding model in the gateway	Enable Knowledge	Library leaves the sidebar, and answers have no Save button
Files in object storage	An S3 bucket	The same bucket settings as Knowledge, see Where files are kept	Attachments and generated images are kept in Postgres
MCP servers	The gateway signing key	On by default; `OBLETH_CHAT_CONNECTIONS`	With `off`, Settings › MCP servers and the composer's Tools button are hidden
Slurm and Kubernetes clusters	The gateway signing key, and a cluster to reach	On by default; `OBLETH_CHAT_CONNECTIONS`	With `mcp` or `off`, Compute › Clusters is hidden
Auto mode for tools	Connections	On by default; `OBLETH_CHAT_AUTO_MODE`	With `off`, every tool that may change something asks first
Workspaces	Kubernetes, a sandbox namespace, a wildcard preview domain	Enable workspaces	Compute › Workspaces, the composer's Workspace button and the model's Turn on workspace prompt are hidden
Research	Workspaces	Comes with workspaces	A project has no Research tab, and the model doesn't suggest research
Research run checks	Research, and a model that answers verdicts	On by default; Decisions	Runs are reported without a check
Project code	Workspaces, and git 2.47 or later where Chat runs (the published image has it)	Comes with workspaces	A project has no Code tab, and project chats have no Git tab
Worker agents	A model marked Worker; workspaces only to read files	Tick Worker in Models, groups and limits	The model has no `delegate` tool
Site name, logo, footer links	Nothing	Branding	The defaults: Obleth Chat and the Obleth mark

Compute appears in the sidebar when at least one of its tabs, Workspaces or Clusters, is available to that person.

Check what's on

/api/capabilities lists each feature as configured or not; the web app reads it when it starts, and hides what is not set up:

curl -s https://chat.example.edu/api/capabilities | jq .features

{
  …
  "connections": true,
  "clusters": true,
  "knowledge": false,
  "workspaces": false
}

workspaces is per person: it's true only for a signed-in account allowed to use them (OBLETH_CHAT_SANDBOX_ACCESS), so the unauthenticated curl above always shows false.

Turn a feature off again

Remove its variables and restart Chat. The data stays in Postgres and the bucket. Turn the feature back on and it's there again.

Knowledge. Collections, saved items and their files are kept.
Object storage. Attachments and generated images already in the bucket can't be opened while it's off, and Chat answers 503 for them. Keep the bucket settings while any files are in it.
Workspaces. Volumes stay in the sandbox namespace. Chat doesn't delete any while workspaces are off, and its retention cleanup (OBLETH_CHAT_SANDBOX_RETENTION_MINUTES) resumes once they're back on.
Clusters. Saved clusters and people's tokens are kept but hidden, and the model is offered no cluster tools.
All connections. With OBLETH_CHAT_CONNECTIONS=off, the connections API answers 503 and no tools are offered. Saved servers and tokens stay encrypted in Postgres.

Why some features need others

Knowledge embeds every document and saved item through the gateway, so it needs the gateway as well as the bucket.
Connections encrypt tokens with a key derived from the gateway signing key. Without a signing key there are no connections, whatever OBLETH_CHAT_CONNECTIONS says. Replacing that key makes saved tokens unreadable, and people enter them again.
Research runs experiments in workspace pods. Slurm runs for research aren't wired up yet.

PreviousInstall

NextConnect the gateway