Author identity

Every pill and prescription records who created it. Pillbox resolves this identity automatically — in most cases you do not need to configure anything.

How resolution works

When an agent calls pill_store or prescription_open, it resolves the author name and email in three steps, in order:

Step 1 — git config

Reads git config user.name and git config user.email from the current repository. If the project has git configured with your data, Pillbox uses it directly.

Step 2 — identity.json

If git returns no value (for example, in a directory without a repository or with git unconfigured), it reads ~/.pillbox/identity.json. If the file exists and contains the name and email fields, it uses them.

Step 3 — asks the user

If neither of the previous steps returns a value, the agent asks you directly for your name and email. Once you respond, it saves the data to ~/.pillbox/identity.json so it will not ask again in future sessions.

The identity.json file

The file lives at ~/.pillbox/identity.json and has this structure:

{
  "name": "Your name",
  "email": "you@email.com"
}

You can create or edit it manually at any time. Pillbox will read it on the next invocation.

Tip

If you use multiple machines or contexts with different identities, step 1 (git config) takes priority — configure git per repository with git config user.name and git config user.email to override the global file.

When the identity is used

The author identity is attached to:

• Every pill created with pill_store
• Every prescription opened with prescription_open

Capsules also accept author_name and author_email in capsule_store, with the same resolution logic.