Run Configuration — Help

At a glance

Run Configuration is your control panel before each run. The decisions here decide what your brain will earn, how stressed it will be at the end, and which domains it will explore.

New to the game? Start with Getting Started for the basic loop, then come back here for the specifics of this screen.

Brain Status — your brain's current condition
Run Duration — how long this run takes
Temperature Mode — how the brain spends its effort
Live Stats — what this configuration will produce
Active Domains — set on the Brain screen, displayed here
Combos — Ru-purchased boosts that persist across runs

Brain Status

Three meters at the top of the screen, all per-brain:

Quality — how good the brain currently is, capped by the model architecture you trained. Quality is what drives sale prices and contract eligibility. The first number is your current quality; the second is the cap your current setup can reach. Quality grows during runs as the brain masters domains.
Frustration — accumulated stress from this run and previous runs. The label next to the number gives you a quick read: Calm at the low end, escalating to warning states. High frustration risks a death spiral that cuts your Ru reward sharply. Balanced and Focused runs reduce it.
Exhaustion — long-term tiredness that persists across runs. The label shifts from Rested upward. Balanced runs help it recover.

Read this section first. If your brain is already stressed or tired, configure a recovery-leaning run instead of pushing for maximum Ru.

Run Duration

Five duration options: 10 Min, 1 Hour, 4 Hours, 8 Hours, 24 Hours. The two longest tiers (8 Hours and 24 Hours) carry a 🔒 lock icon until you own the Rest module — long runs need the brain's stamina the Rest module provides.

Idle run vs active run

A single duration choice covers two very different playstyles:

Idle run — let the run play out on its own. The brain advances at its base idle speed and you collect a Max idle bonus on top of the Ru you would normally get. Hands-off, slower per-step, but the bonus compensates.
Active run — tap through it yourself. Every click adds steps, so the run finishes faster and you can queue more runs in the same wall-clock time. The catch is that the idle bonus shrinks with every click and drops to 0 after 20 clicks — past that, you're trading the bonus for raw throughput.

The Max idle bonus hint under the duration buttons tells you exactly what's at stake. Use the percentage to decide which mode the run is — a high idle bonus on a 24-hour run is a serious Ru boost you don't want to throw away by tapping.

Temperature Mode

Four distinct behavior modes. Each one rebalances learning rate and Ru output, and changes how the brain spreads its attention across active domains:

Focused — learning rate +90%, Ru output drops. The brain ignores everything except the single domain with the highest affinity (the one it's most naturally drawn to). The intensity of that focus builds frustration: a Focused brain is paying full attention, and full attention is exhausting.
Balanced — learning and Ru both -25%, but the brain gradually calms down and recovers: frustration and exhaustion both drop over the run. The maintenance mode. Use it when your brain is stressed or tired and you need a reset.
Creative — Ru output +90%, learning rate drops sharply. Pure Ru-farming mode: you sacrifice progress on quality to maximize this run's payout, and exhaustion piles up fast. Good for liquidity, bad for long-term brain growth.
Chaotic — learning and Ru both +25%, no priority between them — the brain switches modes mid-run. It spreads attention equally across all active domains instead of favoring one. The cost is both frustration and exhaustion climb at the same time. The mode with the highest ceiling and the highest risk.

The lines under the buttons (Ru change, learning rate change, frustration/exhaustion effects) are the trade-offs each mode applies versus a neutral baseline. Read them — they're your at-a-glance decision aid.

You don't have to pick one mode and stick with it. Cycling between modes across runs (Focused or Chaotic to push, Balanced to recover, Creative to cash out) is the intended rhythm — see Tips below.

Live Stats

The numeric row in the middle of the screen previews this run:

Total Steps — total work the brain will perform. Roughly 150 steps on a Cooling-1 rig (Starter Stock Bronze), scaling down to ~50 steps on Cooling 32 (Cluster Cryo Gold). Run boosts can push it lower still.
Estimated Run Duration — how long an idle run of this length will take. Cooling shortens this proportionally to the 1–32 scale; run boosts stack on top (see below).
Click Bonus (steps per tap) — set by the Weekly Click Boost (fixed 25 steps per click on Day 7 of the Daily Reward cycle) or by permanent module upgrades.
Available Domains — how many knowledge domains the brain can explore this run. The number on the right is the slot count (set by your dataset and extra slots from your HDD). The list below the row ("Active: ...") shows which specific domains you toggled on — see the next section.

Run Boosts

Run boosts scale cooling's effect — they shorten run duration and make each click worth more on top of whatever cooling you have installed. Three types, each with a fixed effect and a fixed 30-minute duration:

Boost	Effect	Source
Quick Process	+25% run speed	Ru currency
Sponsored Run	+70% run speed	Rewarded ad (free)
Quantum Run	+140% run speed	Nu premium currency

Boosts speed up the run, not the reward. They save you real-world time (fewer clicks, shorter wall-clock) — the Ru / Cu you earn from the run itself is unchanged.

How they stack

Cross-type stacks additively. Quick Process + Sponsored Run + Quantum Run = +235% run speed. On Cluster Cryo Gold, a max-stacked run clears in about 9 minutes instead of 30.
Same-type does NOT stack the effect. Buying a second Quick Process while one is active just extends the remaining duration — the +25% doesn't become +50%.
Daily limit: 3 boosts per brain per day per type. In one 24-hour window, a single brain can be pushed by up to 9 run boosts total (3× Quick Process + 3× Sponsored Run + 3× Quantum Run).

When to use them

Sponsored Run is the cheapest daily rush — one rewarded ad, +70% for half an hour. If you need to close a run before a deadline, that's the pick.
Quantum Run is the premium panic button — +140% for 30 minutes, no grind. Save for contract crunches, not routine grinding.
Quick Process is the routine option — cheap in Ru terms, still a meaningful cut in run time. Best when you're already sitting on excess Ru.

Auto-Run (Autonomy upgrade)

Once you own the Autonomy upgrade, a brain can run on its own in a loop: one run after another, hands-off, on a single screen with a running Ru tally. It stops automatically when the brain gets too tired (fatigue-capped) — roughly a day's worth of runs before it needs a rest.

The idle / AFK way to farm Ru. Steady, predictable, no combos apply. Great for overnight or back-of-desk sessions.
Fatigue is the natural cap. When it maxes out, the loop stops and the brain needs a recovery run (Balanced) before it can start again.
Not affected by combos. The Ru-per-run figure is what you'd get from a plain single run — auto-run just keeps repeating it.

Active domains — set on the Brain screen

You pick which domains are active on the Brain screen, not here. The Run Configuration screen only shows the result. Open Brain → Active Domains, tap any domain to toggle it on, and you'll fill the available slots:

Brain screen with only History active — 1 of 1 slots used — only *History* on.

Brain screen with both History and Ethics active — 1 of 1 slots used — only *History* on.

More active domains = the brain spreads its effort wider during the run. Fewer active = it goes deeper into the chosen one(s), which builds mastery faster on those specific topics. Before any run, you can also deactivate a fully mastered domain to free its slot for a fresh one — there's no point spending the slot on a domain the brain has already learned all it can.

Slot count grows with two things: your dataset's base allowance (larger datasets = more domain slots) and your HDD, which adds extra slots on top of the dataset baseline. See Hardware Basics for HDD details.

⚠ Affinity beats mastery in the attention split. If your brain has both a fully mastered domain and an unmastered one active, the brain still divides its time by affinity — not by what it already knows. That means time can go into a domain there's nothing left to learn from, while the unmastered one progresses slowly. Sometimes that's fine (the mastered domain still pays Ru). Sometimes you want a pure push on the new topic — in that case, deactivate the mastered one for the next few runs so the brain has nowhere else to look.

🛑 Mastered-only runs lose half their quality gain. If the only active domain is one the brain has already mastered, the rate of quality gain drops by 50% — the brain can't grow much when it has nothing left to learn. The run can still earn Ru, but treat it as half-speed for quality progress. If quality is what you're after, open up an unmastered domain before launching.

Combos

Combos are Ru-purchased boosts that stay active on the brain. Unlike one-shot run boosts, a combo you buy once persists across every run on the same brain — it stays on until you sell the brain, retrain it, or fine-tune it.

The first four combos unlock once you own the three foundation modules — REST, MONOLOG, and EXPLORE:

Inner Peace — reduces frustration by 1% per hour of run time.
Mindful Rest — reduces exhaustion by 1% per hour of run time.
Productive Rest — increases Ru income by 2%.
Deep Study — increases learning rate by 0.7%.

Each visible combo card has a small ? info button below it. Tap it to see the combo's full description, current level, and the bonus per level — useful before deciding which combo to invest Ru into. The ? appears under every visible card, including ones you already own. It's an info button, not a lock indicator.

Combos you cannot yet unlock — because you don't own the required modules — do not appear on this screen at all. To see what other combos exist and which modules they need, go to the Brain Lab. Run Configuration only shows the combos you've already qualified for (or already bought).

Buying a combo right before a run is fine and intended. Since the combo persists across runs, the cost amortizes — even a modest hourly buff on a brain you'll run dozens more times is a strong investment.

Starting the run

The START RUN button commits the configuration and launches the brain. BACK returns to the previous screen without spending anything.

From here you land on the Brain Running screen: live step counter, current domain, learning distribution across active domains, optional run boosts, and the option to hand the run off to background and return to the HUB. That screen has its own help page — /guides/run (coming soon).

Tips & tricks

Cycle through temperatures, don't camp on one. Focused or Chaotic to push quality and Ru, Balanced to recover, Creative for a cash-out run. Pick the mode the brain's current state asks for, not the one you're used to.
Watch frustration and exhaustion every run. They aren't just stats — they directly drag down Ru income once they get high, and a brain pushed past its limit can enter a death spiral that's hard to climb out of. Higher-tier contracts also tend to refuse over-stressed brains.
Ru is the bottleneck for the whole loop. Modules, upgrades, and active combos all cost Ru. Don't dump it all on combos before you have the foundation modules — those modules are what unlock the combos in the first place.
Stressed brain → short Balanced run before anything else. Recovery is cheap compared to losing a run to a death spiral.
Grinding mastery for a contract → Focused on the right domain, multiple active domains toggled on, longer duration if you can afford the stress.
Pure Ru target (gear or unlock) → Creative, longer idle run, plan a Balanced recovery run after.