Configure Assistant permissions and preferences
Define how you submit prompts, how Assistant requests permission, and how it displays reasoning during responses.
You can configure keyboard shortcuts for prompt submission, set permission levels for Assistant operations, enable Autorun, and control whether reasoning collapses automatically. These settings let you adapt Assistant behavior to your workflow and risk tolerance.
Open Assistant preferences
To open the Assistant preferences, follow these steps:
- Open the Assistant window.
- Do one of the following:
- Windows: Select Edit > Preferences > AI > Assistant.
- macOS: Select Unity > Settings > AI > Assistant.
The Assistant preferences panel appears.
Configure prompt submission
Use the Ctrl+Enter (macOS: ⌘Return) option in Assistant to control how you submit prompts. It's useful when you work across different languages or workflows in which accidental prompt submissions can be disruptive.
By default, when you press Enter (macOS: ⌘Return), the prompt is immediately sent to Assistant. This can be inconvenient if you're writing a long prompt, multi-line text, or code block that requires formatting. If you enable the Ctrl+Enter (macOS: ⌘Return) option, it ensures that prompts are only sent to Assistant when you use the full key combination.
To enable modified submission:
- In the Assistant preferences, enable the following:
- Windows: Use Ctrl+Enter to send a prompt
- macOS: Use ⌘Return to send a prompt
- Submit prompts with Ctrl+Enter (macOS: ⌘Return).
Enable Autorun
Autorun controls whether Assistant bypasses confirmation prompts.
When Autorun is enabled:
- Operations set to Allow or Ask Permission run without confirmation.
- Operations set to Deny remain blocked.
Select Enable Autorun to prevent Assistant from asking you for permissions.
Configure permission levels
Each Assistant operation has one of three permission states:
- Allow: Assistant performs the operation without asking.
- Ask Permission: Assistant requests approval before each operation.
- Deny: Assistant blocks the operation without prompting.
To update a permission:
- Locate an operation in the Permissions list.
- From the dropdown menu next to the operation, select Allow, Ask Permission, or Deny.
Control reasoning display
Assistant displays a Reasoning section for each response that shows how it arrives at an answer. This section can be useful to learn, debug prompts, or understand why Assistant chose a specific action. However, it can also add visual noise when you only want to focus on the final result.
Use automatic collapse to keep the conversation clean while still keeping the reasoning available when you need it.
To collapse reasoning automatically, select Collapse Reasoning when complete. Assistant hides the Reasoning section after each response finishes.
Enable Asset Knowledge
Assistant uses Asset Knowledge to understand the visual content of certain assets in your project, not just their file names. When you enable Asset Knowledge, Assistant creates local artificial intelligence (AI) embeddings for supported assets to retrieve accurate context when you ask questions.
For example, if your project contains an image named image_1.png that visually represents a tree, Assistant can still identify it as a tree even though the file name doesn’t describe it.
Without Asset Knowledge, Assistant can only search assets by name. With Asset Knowledge, it can also search by what the asset looks like.
Asset Knowledge supports texture, material, and GameObject asset types.
To use Asset Knowledge, follow these steps:
- In the Assistant preferences, locate the Asset Knowledge section.
- Select Install Asset Knowledge Add-on > Enable Asset Knowledge.
- When prompted, select Yes to install the Sentis package. Unity recompiles the project and creates embeddings for supported assets in the background.
Note
Sentis is a required dependency for Asset Knowledge. If you decline the Sentis installation, Asset Knowledge remains disabled. If you don’t need Asset Knowledge for a specific build, you can remove Sentis before building. Asset Knowledge will be temporarily disabled, but you can reinstall Sentis later to re-enable Asset Knowledge
Note
Asset Knowledge runs entirely on your local machine. Assistant doesn't send any project assets to the cloud.