Skip to main content
An app on Modelence Cloud reads its settings and secrets from environment variables. Some are provided by the platform in every environment, and the rest are declared in the env section of modelence.config.json and set per environment.

​
Provided variables

Names starting with MODELENCE_, and PORT, are reserved and cannot be declared by the app.

​
Declaring variables

Each variable the app expects is declared by name in env:
modelence.config.json
  • text (the default) is a plain setting. A value in the file is the committed default, and a value set for an environment overrides it.
  • secret is for keys, tokens and passwords. It never carries a value in the file, and its value is write-only once set.
  • resource takes its value from a managed database or cache declared in the same file. It can’t be set by hand. See Databases.
A deploy asks for every required variable that has no value in the target environment, and a CI deploy fails without one. Mark a variable the app can run without "required": false.

​
Build and runtime

A variable reaches the running app by default. Anything the build needs as well, such as a VITE_* or NEXT_PUBLIC_* value a bundler inlines into the frontend, also needs "scopes": ["build", "runtime"]. A value scoped to ["build"] alone, such as a private registry token, never reaches the running app. A bundler puts inlined values into code that every visitor downloads, so a secret must never be inlined. Resource variables reach the running app only.

​
When changes take effect

Containers read their variables when they start, so a changed value reaches the running app on the next restart or deploy. A build variable takes effect on the next deploy. In a local environment, the environment’s values reach the app when it starts on your machine, so they never need to be copied into the project.