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Commands, package names, and image names on this page come from the open-source project that Mibyan Desktop is built on, and can differ from the Mibyan Desktop installer. For the supported Mibyan install and update path, see Install and update.
Run multiple independent Mibyan agents on the same machine — each with its own config, API keys, memory, sessions, skills, and gateway state.

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What are profiles?

A profile is a separate Mibyan home directory. Each profile gets its own directory containing its own config.yaml, .env, SOUL.md, memories, sessions, skills, cron jobs, and state database. Mibyan recognises a directory under ~/.mibyan/profiles/ as a profile only when it carries one of those identity files (config.yaml, .env, SOUL.md, profile.yaml, auth.json, state.db); a bare directory left behind by logging or cron is ignored by profile list, gateways and -p. Profiles let you run separate agents for different purposes — a coding assistant, a personal bot, a research agent — without mixing up Mibyan state.
Give every agent its own profileNever point two agent processes at the same profile (the same Mibyan home). Both write memory automatically, and each loads the other’s writes into its system prompt at session start — so two writers on one home compound each other’s state until it stops being anything you configured. Profiles exist exactly to prevent this; agents that need shared memory should use an external memory provider instead.
When you create a profile, it automatically becomes its own command. Create a profile called coder and you immediately have coder chat, coder setup, coder gateway start, etc.

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Profiles, agents, and bots

These terms describe different parts of Mibyan:
  • Profile is the persistent home for an assistant’s configuration and data. It keeps the same state across conversations and restarts.
  • Agent is the running Mibyan assistant that uses that configuration and state. “Mibyan” also names the product.
  • Bot Mode bot is a profile presented as a named entry in the desktop’s Bot Mode roster, with an avatar and a persistent Bot Chat. The same profile remains accessible from the CLI. Every Bot is a profile, but not every profile is a Bot: a profile becomes a Bot when Bot Mode stores its roster presentation (title, avatar, section, hidden state) in the profile’s metadata and pins its canonical Bot Chat. A profile you only ever drive from the CLI, Docker, or a gateway and never add to the roster stays a plain profile.
  • Messaging bot is an account on a platform such as Telegram, Discord, or Slack, connected to Mibyan through the gateway. Its bot token identifies that platform account.
  • Subagent is a child assistant spawned by delegate_task for a task, with a fresh conversation. A separate conversation is different from a separate profile.

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Quick start

That’s it. coder is now its own Mibyan profile with its own config, memory, and state.

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Creating a profile

Quickest setup: run mibyan setup --portal inside the new profile to wire up models + tools at once. See Nous Portal.

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Blank profile

Creates a fresh profile with bundled skills seeded. Run mybot setup to configure API keys, model, and gateway tokens. If you plan to use this profile as a kanban worker (or want the kanban orchestrator to route work to it), pass --description "<role>" at create time so the orchestrator knows what it’s good at:
You can also set or auto-generate the description later with mibyan profile describe — see the Kanban guide for the full routing model.

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Clone config only (--clone)

Copies your current profile’s config.yaml, .env, SOUL.md, skills, and the curated memory files memories/MEMORY.md and memories/USER.md into the new profile — memory is treated as part of the agent’s identity, like SOUL.md. If config.yaml selects an external memory provider (memory.provider), that provider’s own config travels too — its <provider>/ directory or <provider>.json under the profile home, e.g. hindsight/config.json — so the clone’s memory is available instead of silently off; a cloned local_embedded hindsight config still shares the source’s embedded daemon and bank until you give the clone its own hindsight profile/bank_id (#81815). Sessions, state.db, cron jobs and everything else start empty. For a blank memory as well, create the profile without --clone or delete the two files afterwards; the agent never falls back to another profile’s memory when they are absent. Edit ~/.mibyan/profiles/work/.env for different API keys, or ~/.mibyan/profiles/work/SOUL.md for a different personality.

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Keep a clone’s imported agent setups synced (--sync-imports)

If the source profile has run mibyan import-agent, its import-sync.json records which external Claude Code / Codex trees it imported. --clone leaves that manifest behind, so the clone gets a one-off copy of those skills and memories and stops there. Add --sync-imports to carry the manifest over:
This is explicit, opt-in and one-directional, and it links the clone to the external agent trees only — never to the source profile. Both profiles stay independent islands: editing the source’s config.yaml, SOUL.md or skills afterwards never reaches the clone. --clone-all copies the manifest as part of the full copy.

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Clone everything (--clone-all)

Copies everything — config, API keys, personality, all memories, skills, plugins. A complete working snapshot. Per-profile history is excluded (session history, state.db, backups/, state-snapshots/, checkpoints/) — these belong to the source profile and can reach tens of GB. When cloning from the default profile, the local-model runtime trees (models/, runtimes/, node/ — downloaded weights and managed binaries, re-fetched on demand) are skipped too, as mibyan backup already does. Cron jobs are not cloned either: they are scheduled work bound to the source profile and its delivery channel, and a clone that inherited them would run every job twice (two gateways, same job ids). The new profile starts with an empty cron/. For a full backup including history and cron jobs, use mibyan profile export or mibyan backup instead.
OAuth logins are shared, not copiedAnthropic (Claude Pro/Max), OpenAI Codex, and xAI OAuth logins use single-use refresh tokens — a copy of one is not a second credential, it is the same credential with two owners, and the first profile to refresh it revokes it for every other copy. --clone-all (and the dashboard’s credential mirroring) therefore drops those OAuth rows from the clone. The new profile keeps reading the login from the root ~/.mibyan/auth.json, and a token refresh performed inside any profile is written back to root, so all profiles stay signed in. Static API keys are copied as usual. To give a profile its own separate OAuth login, run mibyan -p <name> auth add <provider> inside it.

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Clone from a specific profile

--clone-from <source> selects the source profile directly and implies a config/skills/SOUL clone. Combine it with --clone-all when you want a full copy of that source profile:

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Messaging channels are never cloned (--clone-channels to opt in)

Every clone — --clone, --clone-from, --clone-all, and the dashboard / Desktop / TUI “clone from profile” option — copies the source without its messaging channels: bot tokens and allowlists (TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN, DISCORD_ALLOWED_USERS, WHATSAPP_ENABLED, API_SERVER_KEY, WEBHOOK_SECRET, …), the platforms: / telegram: / discord: sections of config.yaml, gateway.multiplex_profiles / profile_routes, and (for --clone-all) the pairing store, WhatsApp session and other per-bot state. Provider and tool API keys, the model block, memory settings, skills and SOUL.md are copied as before. The command prints which platforms were left behind. The reason is that a bot can only belong to one profile: two standalone gateways holding the same token fight over its long-poll, and a multiplexed gateway parks the duplicate adapter (and mibyan gateway migrate --multiplex refuses with one duplicate-credential blocker per platform). Configure the new profile’s own bots with mibyan -p <name> setup or the dashboard Messaging page.
--clone-channels is refused when a running multiplexed gateway already serves the source (the copy would be parked immediately) — from the CLI, the dashboard and the TUI alike — and otherwise prints a warning naming the platforms now shared with the source. It is an error without a clone flag. mibyan profile list prints the same warning for any existing profile whose bot credential is byte-identical to the default’s, so older clones surface before they bite. What counts as a channel setting — the inventory is ownership-based and is judged in the source profile’s plugin scope (its private plugins/ adapters included):
  • every key an adapter declares (tokens, app/client ids, allowlists, allow-all switches, home channels) and every key under its <PLATFORM>_ prefix, including historical aliases (WECOM_*, SMS_*/TWILIO_*, QQ_*, HASS_*, EMAIL_*);
  • gateway-wide channel policy GATEWAY_ALLOW_ALL_USERS / GATEWAY_ALLOWED_USERS and the relay enrollment identity GATEWAY_RELAY_ID / GATEWAY_RELAY_SECRET / GATEWAY_RELAY_DELIVERY_KEY;
  • for --clone-all, per-bot state files and directories (platforms/, pairing ledgers, google_chat_user_tokens/, <platform>_*).
Credentials that a messaging adapter shares with a non-channel capability — HASS_TOKEN/HASS_URL (also the Home Assistant tool), TWILIO_* (also the telephony skill), EMAIL_* (also mail-sending scripts) — are stripped only when the source’s gateway would run that adapter (the platform is enabled in its config.yaml, or its credential set is complete and not explicitly disabled). A source with platforms.homeassistant.enabled: false uses HASS_TOKEN as a tool key, so the clone keeps it. Allowlists and ports under those prefixes are always channel-only and always stripped. Clones are built in a hidden staging directory beside profiles/ and published with one rename after the strip, so a running multiplexer (which rescans profiles/ on create) can never start adapters on a half-copied tree. A symlinked source .env/config.yaml is materialized as a private copy first — the clone never writes through to the source.
Honcho memory + profilesWhen Honcho is enabled, clone operations automatically create a dedicated AI peer for the new profile while sharing the same user workspace. Each profile builds its own observations and identity. See Honcho — Multi-agent / Profiles for details.

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Using profiles

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Command aliases

Every profile automatically gets a command alias at ~/.local/bin/<name>:
The alias works with every mibyan subcommand — it’s just mibyan -p <name> under the hood.

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The -p flag

You can also target a profile explicitly with any command:

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Sticky default (mibyan profile use)

Sets a default so plain mibyan commands target that profile. Like kubectl config use-context. If the sticky profile’s directory is deleted by hand, Mibyan refuses to run ordinary commands in the default profile instead, since they would read or write the wrong profile’s state. Only the ways out still run, with a warning: mibyan profile list, mibyan profile use default, and mibyan uninstall without --data or --full (those two stay refused; the interactive uninstall menu still offers a full wipe of the default profile behind its confirmation prompts).

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Knowing where you are

The CLI always shows which profile is active:
  • Prompt: coder ❯ instead of ❯
  • Banner: Shows Profile: coder on startup
  • mibyan profile: Shows current profile name, path, model, gateway status

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Profiles vs workspaces vs sandboxing

Profiles are often confused with workspaces or sandboxes, but they are different things:
  • A profile gives Mibyan its own state directory: config.yaml, .env, SOUL.md, sessions, memory, logs, cron jobs, and gateway state.
  • A workspace or working directory is where terminal commands start. That is controlled separately by terminal.cwd.
  • A sandbox is what limits filesystem access. Profiles do not sandbox the agent.
On the default local terminal backend, the agent still has the same filesystem access as your user account. A profile does not stop it from accessing folders outside the profile directory. If you want a profile to start in a specific project folder, set an explicit absolute terminal.cwd in that profile’s config.yaml:
Using cwd: "." on the local backend means “the directory Mibyan was launched from”, not “the profile directory”. Also note:
  • SOUL.md can guide the model, but it does not enforce a workspace boundary.
  • Changes to SOUL.md take effect cleanly on a new session. Existing sessions may still be using the old prompt state.
  • Asking the model “what directory are you in?” is not a reliable isolation test. If you need a predictable starting directory for tools, set terminal.cwd explicitly.

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Running gateways

Each profile runs its own gateway as a separate process with its own bot token:

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Different bot tokens

Each profile has its own .env file. Configure a different Telegram/Discord/Slack bot token in each:

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Safety: token locks

If two profiles accidentally use the same bot token, the second gateway will be blocked with a clear error naming the conflicting profile. Supported for Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, and Signal.

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Persistent services

Each profile gets its own service name. They run independently.
Inside the official Docker imagePer-profile gateways are supervised by s6-overlay (PID 1 in the container), so mibyan profile create <name> automatically registers an s6 service slot at /run/service/gateway-<name>/. mibyan -p <name> gateway start/stop/restart dispatches to s6-svc instead of spawning a bare process — crashes are auto-restarted and docker restart preserves the previously-running set of gateways. See Per-profile gateway supervision for details.

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Configuring profiles

Each profile has its own:
  • config.yaml — model, provider, toolsets, all settings
  • .env — API keys, bot tokens
  • SOUL.md — personality and instructions
If you want this profile to work in a specific project by default, also set its own terminal.cwd:

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From the dashboard

The web dashboard is a machine-level surface that can manage any profile’s config, API keys, skills, MCPs, and model via the profile switcher in its sidebar — no per-profile dashboard needed. coder dashboard routes to the machine dashboard with the coder profile preselected. The dashboard’s Chat tab also follows the switcher, spawning a conversation under the selected profile’s home. Note: “Set as active” on the dashboard’s Profiles page is the sticky default for future CLI/gateway runs (same as mibyan profile use) — to edit a profile from the dashboard, use the switcher instead.

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Updating

mibyan update pulls code once (shared) and syncs new bundled skills to all profiles automatically:
User-modified skills are never overwritten. Dependency preparation reads every profile’s config.yaml to compute the plugin set the shared environment must carry. A profile whose config.yaml does not parse (or whose plugins / memory sections have the wrong shape) fails that step for the whole install — see Dependency preparation and preservation.

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Managing profiles

In chat, the same two live as /export and /import — and in the desktop app as ⌘K → Export/Import profile…. See Sharing a profile.

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Naming the default profile

The default profile’s internal ID is always default — it can’t be truly renamed because ~/.mibyan is the installation root. Renaming it instead sets a display name, which UI surfaces show in place of the bare ID:
The display name appears in mibyan profile list/show, the /profile chat command, the dashboard, and the desktop app (including the Bot Mode roster). It is presentation-only: -p default, service names, cron jobs, and every other reference keep using the canonical default ID. It is stored as display_name in ~/.mibyan/profile.yaml; remove that line to revert. Named profiles can carry a display_name too (it survives a real rename), but rename for them still renames the profile itself.

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Deleting a profile

This stops the gateway, removes the systemd/launchd service, removes the command alias, and deletes all profile data. You’ll be asked to type the profile name to confirm. Use --yes to skip confirmation: mibyan profile delete coder --yes
You cannot delete the default profile (~/.mibyan). To remove everything, use mibyan uninstall.

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Tab completion

Add the line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc for persistent completion. Completes profile names after -p, profile subcommands, and top-level commands.

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How it works

Profiles use the mibyan_HOME environment variable. When you run coder chat, the wrapper script sets mibyan_HOME=~/.mibyan/profiles/coder before launching mibyan. Since 119+ files in the codebase resolve paths via get_mibyan_home(), Mibyan state automatically scopes to the profile’s directory — config, sessions, memory, skills, state database, gateway PID, logs, and cron jobs. This is separate from terminal working directory. Tool execution starts from terminal.cwd (or the launch directory when cwd: "." on the local backend), not automatically from mibyan_HOME. On host installs, tool subprocesses keep your real OS-user HOME by default so existing CLI credentials under ~ keep working across profiles. Profile data is isolated by mibyan_HOME, not by changing HOME. Container backends still use {mibyan_HOME}/home for persistent tool state, and host users who need strict per-profile tool config can opt in with terminal.home_mode: profile. This means two things that are easy to mix up:
  • mibyan_HOME is the profile boundary. It controls Mibyan config, .env, memory, sessions, skills, logs, cron jobs, gateway state, and other Mibyan data.
  • HOME is the operating-system/user home that external CLIs expect. On host installs, Mibyan keeps it as the real user home by default so tools like git, ssh, gh, az, npm, Claude Code, and Codex find the same credentials they use in your normal shell.
The tradeoff is that host profiles share normal user-level CLI state by default. If you need separate CLI identities per profile, set terminal.home_mode: profile in that profile’s config.yaml. In that mode Mibyan launches tool subprocesses with HOME={mibyan_HOME}/home; you then need to initialize or link the profile-specific ~/.ssh, ~/.gitconfig, ~/.config/gh, cloud CLI auth, Claude/Codex auth, npm state, and similar files inside that profile home. Mibyan also exposes mibyan_REAL_HOME to subprocesses so scripts can still find the actual account home when home_mode: profile is active. The default profile is simply ~/.mibyan itself. No migration needed — existing installs work identically.

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Sharing a profile

A profile you built on one machine can go to another — your own workstation, a teammate’s laptop, or the community. Two paths: Send a file. /export packs the profile into one .tar.gz — skills, memory, persona, crons, plugins, settings, and (from the desktop) your theme and layout. API keys are stripped. The recipient runs /import. Machine-specific PM state is not portable. Export, import, and distribution install exclude installs/, tools/, and cache/ at a profile’s root. Backup and restore apply the same rule to the default home and named profiles. Older archives cannot replace the destination machine’s PM selections or tools. Files such as plugins/example/facts.json and skills/example/tools/helper.py remain user data and are preserved. Install dependencies on the destination through PM, rather than copying environments.
Publish a distribution. Package the profile as a git repository so recipients install it with one command and pull versioned updates later. Carries the SOUL, config, skills, cron jobs, and MCP connections; credentials, memories, and sessions stay per-machine.
Use an export file for a one-time handoff or a move; use a distribution for an agent you’ll keep shipping. See Profile Distributions: Share a Whole Agent for both — the comparison table, authoring, publishing, update semantics, and the security model.