Environment Variables¶

All environment variables supported by SpecMem.

Core Variables¶

Variable	Description	Default
`SPECMEM_CONFIG`	Path to config file	`.specmem.toml`
`SPECMEM_LOG_LEVEL`	Log level (debug, info, warning, error)	`info`
`SPECMEM_NO_COLOR`	Disable colored output	`false`
`SPECMEM_DATA_DIR`	Data directory path	`.specmem`

Embedding Providers¶

OpenAI¶

Variable	Description	Required
`OPENAI_API_KEY`	OpenAI API key	Yes
`OPENAI_ORG_ID`	Organization ID	No
`OPENAI_BASE_URL`	Custom API base URL	No

Google¶

Variable	Description	Required
`GOOGLE_API_KEY`	Google API key	Yes

Together AI¶

Variable	Description	Required
`TOGETHER_API_KEY`	Together AI API key	Yes

Vector Databases¶

Qdrant¶

Variable	Description	Required
`QDRANT_URL`	Qdrant server URL	No
`QDRANT_API_KEY`	Qdrant API key	No

ChromaDB¶

Variable	Description	Required
`CHROMA_HOST`	ChromaDB server host	No
`CHROMA_PORT`	ChromaDB server port	No

Configuration Overrides¶

Override any config option via environment variable:

# Pattern: SPECMEM_<SECTION>_<KEY>
export SPECMEM_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER="openai"
export SPECMEM_EMBEDDING_MODEL="text-embedding-3-small"
export SPECMEM_VECTORDB_BACKEND="qdrant"
export SPECMEM_IMPACT_MAX_DEPTH="3"

CI/CD Variables¶

Recommended variables for CI environments:

# Disable interactive prompts
export SPECMEM_CI="true"

# Use JSON logging
export SPECMEM_LOG_FORMAT="json"

# Strict validation
export SPECMEM_VALIDATION_STRICT="true"

Docker Variables¶

ENV SPECMEM_CONFIG=/app/.specmem.toml
ENV SPECMEM_DATA_DIR=/data/specmem
ENV SPECMEM_LOG_LEVEL=info

Example .env File¶

# .env (add to .gitignore)

# Embedding provider
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

# Vector database
QDRANT_URL=https://your-cluster.qdrant.io
QDRANT_API_KEY=...

# Logging
SPECMEM_LOG_LEVEL=debug

Loading Environment Variables¶

Python¶

from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

from specmem import SpecMemClient
sm = SpecMemClient()  # Uses env vars automatically

Shell¶

# Load from .env
export $(cat .env | xargs)

# Run SpecMem
specmem scan

Security Notes¶

Never Commit API Keys

Add .env to .gitignore
Use secret management in CI/CD
Rotate keys regularly

Use .specmem.local.toml

For local overrides that shouldn't be committed:

# .specmem.local.toml (gitignored)
[embedding]
provider = "openai"
api_key = "sk-..."