Global settings

global: holds Router-wide settings and shared infrastructure: the Router engine, its services, stores, integrations, model catalog and default plugins. Define a service or store once under global:, then opt individual routes into it with signals, algorithms or plugins.

config.yaml

global:
  services:
    observability:
      metrics:
        enabled: true
  stores:
    response_cache:
      backend_type: memory
  plugins:
    - type: response_cache
      configuration:
        enabled: true

Why a separate block

• Define shared infrastructure once for all recipes and routes, instead of repeating connections in every decision.
• Keep route-local policy apart from platform-wide services: route matching, candidate models, algorithms and plugins stay in routing:.
• Make dependencies explicit. Models, storage and external services appear in one place, so their data and trust boundaries are visible.

note

Global settings are shared across recipes. Signals, projections and decisions are recipe-scoped, while algorithms and plugins belong to individual decisions. Entrypoints and named recipes are top-level objects rather than global settings; see Virtual Models.

The six groups

Group	Owns	Guide
global.router	Router engine controls, selection defaults, streamed-body policy, routing input, learning	Algorithms, Router Learning, Routing input
global.services	API, Response API, observability, authz, rate limits, management API, startup status, replay	API and Observability
global.stores	response cache, memory, vector store	Stores and Tools
global.integrations	tool catalog and Looper runtime/state	Stores and Tools
global.model_catalog	deployments, bindings, admission, the embedding and decision models	Connect the Router to the model runtime
global.plugins	the default plugins every request runs, such as context (memory, compress.signals) and router_replay	Plugins

Remote text embeddings are covered in Embeddings.

Operational boundaries

• Keep overrides sparse. Omitted fields inherit Router defaults.
• Keep secrets out of YAML. Put credentials in environment variables or Kubernetes Secrets, not literal YAML values.
• Model reasoning is per model. Built-in reasoning behavior comes from providers.models[].catalog. Self-hosted models can select a built-in family or define inline behavior in providers.models[].reasoning; neither belongs under global:.

warning

Persistent stores may contain prompts, responses, embeddings, memories or replay records. Set backend authentication, transport security, retention and tenant or user scope deliberately.

The complete configuration reference is config/config.yaml.