Preferences

Keen allows you to configure various preferences to customize the behavior of the application. Preferences are stored in the configuration manager (~/.keen/config.db) and can be managed using the pref command in the interactive shell or via the Web UI.

Unlike API keys, preferences are not encrypted and do not require unlocking the key manager to view or modify.

Available Preferences

Data Extraction Mode (extraction_mode)

This preference controls how data extracted from JSON responses (e.g., usernames, names, passwords extracted by the PatternExtractor) is handled when added to the graph.

Available options:

  • merge (Default): Same values from different services merge into a single node. This is useful for finding connections across different leaks. (e.g., Value = Username)
  • isolate: Same values become separate nodes to avoid false merging. A short random hash is appended to the value. (e.g., Value = Username#a1b2)
  • isolate_with_service: Values are prefixed with the source service name to keep them separated by source. (e.g., Value = BreachVIP:Service:Username)

Usage

Listing Preferences

To list all available preferences, use the pref list command:

keen > pref list

Example: 

keen > pref list

                               Preferences
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Key              ┃ Value                                                   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ extraction_mode  │ merge                                                   │
└──────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Getting a Preference

To get the value of a specific preference, use the pref get command:

keen > pref get <key>

Example: 

keen > pref get extraction_mode
INFO     | extraction_mode = merge

Setting a Preference

To set a preference value, use the pref set command:

keen > pref set <key> <value>

Example: 

keen > pref set extraction_mode isolate
SUCCESS  | Preference 'extraction_mode' set to 'isolate'.

Security / Blocked Keys

To prevent accidental modification or exposure of sensitive internal data, certain keys are blocked and cannot be accessed, listed, or modified via the pref command:

  • last_workspace
  • api_keys_salt
  • master_password_check

Web UI

You can also manage preferences in the Web UI. Open the Settings / API Keys modal, and you will find the Data Extraction Mode dropdown in the Preferences section.