To be fair, I can think of reasons why you would want to be able to set them in various ways.

- settings.json - set for machine, project

- env var - set for an environment/shell/sandbox

- slash command - set for a session

- magical keyword - set for a turn

It's not unique to LLMs. Take BASH: you've got `/etc/profile`, `~/.bash_profile,` `~/.bash_login`, `~/.bashrc`, `~/.profile`, environment variables, and shell options.

You are yet to discover the joys of the managed settings scope. They can be set three ways. The claude.ai admin console; by one of two registry keys e.g. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\ClaudeCode; and by an alphabetically merged directory of json files.

Especially some settings are in setting.json, and others in .claude.json So sometimes I have to go through both to find the one I want to tweak