Environment Variables¶

Configure janito using environment variables for automation and scripting.

Available Variables¶

Variable	Description	Example
`OPENAI_BASE_URL`	Base URL of the OpenAI-compatible API	`https://api.openai.com`
`OPENAI_API_KEY`	API key for authentication	`sk-xxxxxxxx...`
`OPENAI_MODEL`	Model name/deployment name	`gpt-4`

Unix/Linux/macOS¶

Bash¶

# For OpenAI
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-your-openai-key"
export OPENAI_MODEL="gpt-4"

# For local servers
export OPENAI_BASE_URL="http://localhost:1234/v1"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="not-needed"
export OPENAI_MODEL="local-model"

Zsh¶

Same as Bash. Add to ~/.zshrc:

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-your-key"
export OPENAI_MODEL="gpt-4"

Windows¶

PowerShell¶

# For OpenAI
$env:OPENAI_API_KEY = "sk-your-openai-key"
$env:OPENAI_MODEL = "gpt-4"

# For local servers
$env:OPENAI_BASE_URL = "http://localhost:1234/v1"
$env:OPENAI_API_KEY = "not-needed"
$env:OPENAI_MODEL = "local-model"

Command Prompt (cmd)¶

set OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key
set OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-4

Examples¶

OpenAI API¶

export OPENAI_BASE_URL="https://api.openai.com"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-your-key"
export OPENAI_MODEL="gpt-4"
janito "Explain quantum computing"

Local LLM (LM Studio, Ollama)¶

export OPENAI_BASE_URL="http://localhost:1234/v1"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="not-needed"
export OPENAI_MODEL="local-model-name"
janito "What is 2+2?"

Custom Provider (MiniMax)¶

Configure the provider using CLI, then set the endpoint and credentials via environment variables:

# Configure provider (writes to config.json)
janito --set provider=custom --set endpoint="https://api.minimax.chat/minimax/v1" --set model="MiniMax-M2.7"

# Set API key via environment variable
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key"
janito "Hello"

Using .env Files¶

For better security, store your API keys in a .env file and load them with python-dotenv:

Install python-dotenv¶

pip install python-dotenv

Create .env file¶

# .env
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key
OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-4

Load in your script¶

# Load environment variables
export $(cat .env | xargs)

# Or use python-dotenv
python -c "from dotenv import load_dotenv; load_dotenv()"

# Run janito
janito "Hello"

Security Note

Never commit .env files to version control. Add .env to your .gitignore.

Notes¶

Environment variables take precedence over saved configuration
The --set and --config CLI options override environment variables at runtime
For security, avoid hardcoding API keys in scripts