Output Styles

Output styles change how Qwen Code writes its responses — the tone, the amount of narration, how much it explains — without changing what it can do. A style is a named block of instructions layered onto the built-in system prompt, and the model is reminded of the active style on every turn so it holds up over long sessions.

Built-in styles

Style	What it does
default	No extra style — the standard prompt.
Concise	Answers first, with no preamble, narration, or closing recap. The work stays as thorough as ever; error reports and safety confirmations keep their full content.
Proactive	Starts work immediately and prefers a stated assumption over a question on low-risk decisions. Does not change what is allowed: the approval mode and confirmation rules still apply in full.
Explanatory	Adds short educational "Insight" notes about the codebase and the implementation choices alongside the work.
Learning	Collaborative learn-by-doing: hands you small, meaningful pieces of code to write (marked `TODO(human)`), then waits. Skipped in headless runs, which cannot wait for you.

Choosing a style

Run /output-style to open a picker, or set one directly:

/output-style Concise
/output-style default   # back to no style

The change applies to the running session immediately — the system prompt is rebuilt in place, so the next turn already answers in the new style — and it is persisted for future sessions. If a trusted project setting currently owns general.outputStyle, the command updates that project setting; otherwise it updates your user setting. Style names are case-insensitive.

You can also set the style without the command:

Settings: "general": { "outputStyle": "Concise" } in settings.json (user or project scope). A hand edit takes effect on the next start.
One run: qwen -p "..." --output-style Concise overrides the setting for that run. See Headless Mode.

Scope and interactions

A style layers onto the built-in prompt. When --system-prompt or QWEN_SYSTEM_MD replaces the prompt entirely, the style (and its per-turn reminder) is not applied.
Styles apply to the main conversation only; subagents run their own system prompts.
--bare and --safe-mode ignore the setting and do not allow /output-style changes.
Changing the style mid-session invalidates the cached prompt prefix once; after that, caching works as usual.

Styles adjust tone and workflow, not knowledge or permissions. For project conventions the model should always know, use context files (QWEN.md); for a one-off addition to the prompt, use --append-system-prompt.