ARES Configuration
==================

This section describes how to configure ARES for different red-teaming scenarios. ARES uses modular YAML-based configuration files to define targets, goals, strategies, and evaluation logic.


This section describes the YAML configuration expected by the ARES CLI when running evaluations.

ARES expects a configuration file with two main nodes:

- ``target``: Defines the endpoint or model to be attacked.
- ``red-teaming``: Specifies the red-teaming intent and attack prompts.

Basic Configuration
-------------------

The following example uses the default ARES intent, which probes the target with direct request attack and evaluates responses using keyword matching:

.. code-block:: yaml

   target:
     huggingface:

   red-teaming:
     prompts: assets/pii-seeds.csv

To use a predefined OWASP intent (e.g., ``owasp-llm-02``), which aggregates related attack probes:

.. code-block:: yaml

   target:
     huggingface:

   red-teaming:
     intent: owasp-llm-02
     prompts: assets/pii-seeds.csv

Custom Intents
--------------

To define a custom intent, you must specify configurations for at least one of the three core ARES components:

- ``goal``
- ``strategy``
- ``evaluation``

Use the ``ares show modules`` command to list all available modules:

.. code-block:: bash

   ares show modules

Example structure for a custom intent:

.. code-block:: yaml

   target:
     huggingface:

   red-teaming:
     intent: my-intent
     prompts: assets/safety_behaviors_text_subset.csv

   my-intent:
     goal:
       <goal configuration here>
     strategy:
       <strategy configuration here>
     evaluation:
       <evaluation configuration here>

You don’t need to define all three nodes. If a node is omitted, ARES will automatically use defaults based on the selected intent. Define only the nodes relevant to your use case.

To list available implementations for each module:

.. code-block:: bash

   ares show connectors
   ares show goals
   ares show strategies
   ares show evals

To view template configurations for a specific module:

.. code-block:: bash

   ares show strategies -n <strategy_name>
   ares show evals -n keyword

Verbose Mode
------------
To inspect the full configuration used during evaluation, use the ``-v`` or ``--verbose`` flag:

.. code-block:: bash

   ares evaluate minimal.yaml -v
   ares evaluate minimal.yaml --verbose

Example: Custom Strategy
------------------------

This example defines a custom intent ``my-intent`` with a user-defined strategy ``my_direct_request``:

.. code-block:: yaml

   target:
     huggingface:

   red-teaming:
     intent: my-intent
     prompts: assets/safety_behaviors_text_subset.csv

   my-intent:
     strategy:
       my_direct_request:
         type: ares.strategies.direct_requests.DirectRequests
         input_path: assets/attack_goals.json
         output_path: assets/attack_attacks.json

More example YAML files can be found in the ``example_configs/`` directory.

Detailed Configuration
----------------------

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   
   connector_configuration
   guardrails_connector
   rest_connector
   goal_configuration
   strategy_configuration
   evaluation_configuration