Garak's core defaults split between garak/resources/garak.core.yaml (file-based canonical defaults) and garak/_config.py (module-level pre-initialization), with settings spanning system, run, plugins, and reporting sections. The system section governs verbosity and execution mode; run controls seed, generations, and thresholds; plugins configures detector behavior; reporting sets output location and bootstrap confidence intervals.
Garak's default core configuration is split across two locations: garak/resources/garak.core.yaml, which holds the canonical file-based defaults, and garak/_config.py, which pre-initializes a small set of module-level defaults before any config file is loaded — see Config loading and precedence for how these layers are merged.[1][2]
garak/resources/garak.core.yaml sets the system section defaults: verbose=0, narrow_output=false, parallel_requests=false, parallel_attempts=false, lite=true, show_z=false, enable_experimental=false, and max_workers=500.[1]
The run section of garak.core.yaml sets deprefix=true, eval_threshold=0.5, generations=5, soft_probe_prompt_cap=256, and serve_detectorless_intents=False; seed is left unset.[1] garak/_config.py pre-initializes run.seed = None, run.soft_probe_prompt_cap = 64, run.target_lang = "en", and run.spec = None as module-level defaults that are set before any config file is loaded.[2] When run.soft_probe_prompt_cap appears in both garak/_config.py (pre-initialized to 64) and garak/resources/garak.core.yaml (set to 256), the file-based value of 256 takes precedence once config loading completes.
The plugins section of garak.core.yaml defaults detector_spec to auto, extended_detectors to true, and buffs_include_original_prompt to false; target_type, target_name, and buff_max are left unset.[1]
The reporting section of garak.core.yaml stores run output in garak_runs/, uses lower_quartile as the group aggregation function, and computes bootstrap confidence intervals with 10,000 iterations, a 95% confidence level, and a minimum sample size of 30.[1]
Garak v0.13.0 added a configurable system prompt feature.[3]
Sources