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Environment variables

All configuration lives in a .env file at the project root. Variables are loaded at startup.

One provider key is required

The model dropdown is empty unless at least one configured provider has its API key set. See Providers to pick which one.

Variable Required Default Description
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY Yes* — Anthropic API key. Required unless you enable a different provider in providers.yaml.
OPENAI_API_KEY No — Enables the OpenAI provider.
GEMINI_API_KEY No — Enables the Google Gemini provider.
OPENROUTER_API_KEY No — Enables OpenRouter (gateway to many models).
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY No — Enables DeepSeek.
GROQ_API_KEY No — Enables Groq.
PORT No 5000 Flask server port. Ignored by the default Docker setup, which binds 5000:5000.
DEBUG No False true enables debug mode, verbose LLM logs, and disables rate limits.
FLASK_ENV No — Set to development to flag as local (rate-limit exempt).
LOCAL No False Alternative flag that marks the app as local.
SECRET_KEY No random per start Flask session secret. Set a stable value in production. Generate with python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))".
RATE_LIMIT_SUMMARIZE No 30 per hour Rate limit for /summarize only. Accepts any Flask-Limiter rule, e.g. "60 per hour" or "5 per minute;100 per day". See Rate limiting.

* "Required" means at least one enabled provider must have its API key set. The default providers.yaml ships with Anthropic flagged as the default provider, so ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is the simplest path. Swap to any other provider in providers.yaml and a different key becomes the required one.

Generating a SECRET_KEY

python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))"

Set the resulting value in .env so sessions survive container restarts.

Adding custom provider keys

If you register a provider in config/providers.local.yaml that references a new env var (e.g. MY_PROXY_API_KEY), you need to do two things:

  1. Add the value to .env.
  2. Add a matching line to the environment: block in docker-compose.yml so it reaches the container:
environment:
  - MY_PROXY_API_KEY=${MY_PROXY_API_KEY:-}

The compose file uses an explicit allowlist (rather than env_file:) so that only the variables you list flow into the container.