OpenAF flags

Most of the functionalities of OpenAF can be configured through the global variable “__flags”. This global variable has multiple keys and sub-keys witn values. If a particular key or sub-key might not exist in an old OpenAF version and this should noticeable by the absence of value.

Runtime flags overview

Use the following knobs to control baseline oJob behavior without editing every YAML file:

Name Default Purpose
OJOB_SEQUENTIAL true Force sequential todo execution unless jobs specify async
OJOB_SHAREARGS true Share mutated args maps between sequential jobs
OJOB_INIT_ARRAY_ARGS_LIST true Wrap root array args into { _list: [...] }
OJOB_CHECK_JOB_CHANGES false Warn when a job with the same name is redefined
OJOB_CHECK_JOB_REMOVAL false Warn when jobs are removed at runtime
OJOB_JSONLOG unset Emit JSON console logs
OJOB_AUTHORIZEDDOMAINS ojob.io Allowlist for remote includes
OJOB_LOCALPATH unset Local base path for resolving includes

Set them with environment variables (export OJOB_SEQUENTIAL=false) or directly on the YAML as ojob.flags.<NAME>.

AI and LLM configuration

Environment Default Purpose
OAF_MODEL unset Default $llm() / $gpt() provider definition (JSON or SLON)
OPENAI_API_KEY unset Credential for ow.ai OpenAI wrappers
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY unset Credential for Anthropic wrappers
GEMINI_API_KEY unset Google Gemini credential
OLLAMA_HOST http://localhost:11434 URL for local Ollama deployments

The same map format can be assigned to OAFP_MODEL to drive the oafp CLI prompts.

Integrity, validation, and security

Environment Default Notes
OAF_INTEGRITY {} Map of script integrity hashes
OAF_INTEGRITY_WARN true Warn instead of abort on mismatch
OAF_INTEGRITY_STRICT false Require all entries to be present
OAF_SIGNATURE_STRICT false Require signed scripts
OAF_SIGNATURE_KEY unset Public key material for signature validation
OAF_VALIDATION_STRICT false Enforce both integrity and signatures

Combine these with ojob.integrity blocks (see the oJob Security guide) for layered protection.

Misc performance levers

Common tuning flags when you need to squeeze more throughput or change behavior:

  • OAF_PRECOMPILE_LEVEL controls the aggressive JavaScript to bytecode compile level (0..2).
  • PFOREACH.seq_thrs_ms, PFOREACH.threads_thrs, PFOREACH.waitms, PFOREACH.seq_ratio, PFOREACH.forceSeq influence when pForEach switches between sequential and parallel processing.
  • PRINT_BUFFER_STREAM (bytes) adjusts buffered output for print calls.
  • HTTP_TIMEOUT, HTTP_CON_TIMEOUT, HTTPD_THREADS override HTTP client/server defaults.
  • HTTP_DEFAULT_HEADERS, HTTP_USE_MEDIA_TYPE control ow.obj.http header handling.

Adjusting via YAML 

ojob:
  flags:
    OJOB_CHECK_JOB_CHANGES: true
    HTTP_TIMEOUT: 45000

Inspecting runtime flags 

print(stringify(__flags, void 0, '  '))
__flags Type Description
OJOB_SEQUENTIAL Boolean If true an oJob will be execute the ‘todo’ component sequentially by default.
OJOB_SHAREARGS Boolean If true, in an oJob, if a ‘job’ execution returns a map it will be merged into the next ‘job’ execution as ‘args’.
OJBO_HELPSIMPLEUI Boolean If true, the ‘ojob’ command-line UI will default to the simplest non-ansi version. Helpful for old terminals.
OJOB_JOBSIGNORELOG Array List of OpenAF oJobs ‘jobs’ which will be ignored the value of jobs[].typeArgs.shortcut.nolog and log everything.
OJOB_CONSOLE_STDERR Boolean If true the oJob console logging will be output to stderr.
OJOB_INIT_ARRAY_ARGS_LIST Boolean Will convert oJob ‘args’ arrays into a map with ‘_list’.
OJOB_CHECK_JOB_REMOVAL Boolean If true, in oJob, it will check if code tries to remove any job definition and will emit a warning.
OJOB_CHECK_JOB_CHANGES Boolean If true, in oJob, it will check if code tries to change any job definition and will emit a warning.
OAF_CLOSED Boolean If true it will not allow ow.debug to change code to add debug instructions.
OAF_PRECOMPILE_LEVEL Number Obsolete flag that if 0 would mean no pre-compile from javascript to java should be performed up to 2 to force pre-compile.
TEMPLATE_SET Boolean If true ow.template OpenAF helpers will be able to change data otherwise template data will be read-only.
VISIBLELENGTH Boolean If true the format OpenAF functions will calculate length based on terminal visible length, since some characterts (e.g. emoticons) might need more bytes than other, instead of byte length.
MD_NOMAXWIDTH Boolean When generating HTML for a Markdown input, if true, it won’t impose a maximum width to the content body.
MD_SHOWDOWN_OPTIONS Map Allows for adding options to be used with the Showdown Javascript library when converting Markdown into HTML.
USE_JAVA_GENUUID Boolean If true it will default to a faster Java based code to generate an UUID, otherwise it will use a Javascript based version.
ANSICOLOR_CACHE Boolean If true any ANSI byte generation to represent colors will be cached in memory instead of using code to determine it making ansi color functionality faster.
ANSICOLOR_ASK Boolean If true it will default to use ANSI colors for OpenAF’s ask* functions.
OPENMETRICS_LABEL_MAX Boolean Will impose a maximum of 128 bytes for OpenMetrics labels.
TREE.fullKeySize Boolean If true, on printTree, will align map keys.
TREE.fullValSize Boolean If true, on printTree, will align map values.
TREE.withValues Boolean If true, on printTree, values will be included.
TREE.wordWrap Boolean If true, on printTree, string values will be word-wrapped.
TREE.compact Boolean If true, on printTree, a more compact format will be used.
TABLE.wordWrap Boolean If true, on printTable, will word-wrap the render values.
TABLE.wordWrapUseSep Boolean If true, on printTable, will use a visual separator between table rows.
TABLE.bandRows Boolean If true, on printTable, will band color table rows.
CONSOLE.view String Choice between “tree” or “map” on OpenAF console when “view on”.
IO.bufferSize Number The number of bytes to be used as buffer for most IO functions.
ALTERNATIVES.traverse Boolean Feature flag for a faster alternative implementation of the ‘traverse’ function.
ALTERNATIVES.extend Boolean Feature flag for a faster alternative implementation of the ‘extend’ function.
ALTERNATIVES.merge Boolean Feature flag for a faster alternative implementation of the ‘merge’ function.
ALTERNATIVES.jsonParse Boolean Feature flag for a faster alternative implementation of the ‘jsonParse’ function.
ALTERNATIVES.listFilesRecursive Boolean Feature flag for a faster alternative implementation of the ‘listFilesRecursive’ function.
ATLERNATIVES.colorify Boolean Feature flag for a faster alternative implementation of the ‘colorify’ function.
WITHMD.htmlFilter Boolean If true, the function ow.format.withMD will try to remove any HTML references from the output to be returned.
OAFP.libs Array List of oAFp’s libs to assume by default instead of having to reference ‘libs=something,other’
SH.prefixLog Boolean If true will use ‘log’ functions instead of ‘print’ functions when the $sh prefix functionality is used.
ALTERNATIVE_HOME String If the current user home folder is not writable this will be the folder used to store OpenAF files (defaults to the OS temporary folder)
ALTERNATIVE_PROCESSEXPR Boolean Feature flag for a faster alternative implementation for the processExpr function.
HTTP_DEFAULT_HEADERS Boolean If true HTTP requests will be send with default headers such as “Accept: *”.
HTTP_USE_MEDIA_TYPE Boolean If true will use the declared HTTP header mime type to force the media type to use (when using ow.obj.http).
SQL_QUERY_METHOD String When $sql is used it will either ‘auto’matically try to decide between a simple implementation or full H2 implementation OR ‘nlinq’ to force the simple implementation OR ‘h2’ to force the full H2 implementation.
SQL_QUERY_H2_INMEM Boolean If true and when the $sql query method is used the H2 in-memory implementation will be used using more memory but faster.
SQL_QUERY_COLS_DETECT_SAMPLE Number When using $sql the number of random rows, from the result set, to use to determine the fields set.
DOH_PROVIDER String Sets the DNS over HTTP (DOH) provider should be used (between ‘cloudflare, ‘google’, ‘nextdns’ and ‘local) when DOH functions are used.
PRINT_BUFFER_STREAM Number The number of bytes to use to improve the performance of the bare OpenAF printing functions.
JAVA_CERT_BC_PROVIDER Boolean If true and if the BouncyCastle oPack is installed it will use it as the Java certificate provider on the ow.java.cipher functionality.
PFOREACH.seq_thrs_ms Number In the pForEach function if the time spent on each execution is less than this value a decision to switch for parallel to sequential execution will be taken to increase the global performance.
PFOREACH.threads_thrs Number Influences the decision, on the pForEach function, to switch between sequential or parallel execution given the current queued threads for execution (the bigger the number the faster the decision will be made as the queue increases)
PFOREACH.waitms Number In the pForEach function this will determine how long, in ms, will the function, when running in parallel execution, will wait between checks on used threads.
PFOREACH.forceSeq Boolean In the pForEach function if this flag is true the processing will be forced to be sequential.
PFOREACH.seq_ratio Number In the pForEach function, if the ration between the number of active threads and available reported CPU cores is bigger than this.