Environment variables

Each app's environment lives in the Env tab as managed key → value rows. The rows are the source of truth; Pyvolt generates a .env file on your server from them and restarts your app so changes take effect.

Managing rows

Add / edit / delete rows inline. Saving writes the file to /home/pyvolt/sites/<domain>/.env and restarts the app service.
Secrets are masked in the UI. Keys that look secret (SECRET_KEY, *_API_KEY, *_TOKEN, *_PASSWORD, *_DSN) are masked automatically; you can toggle any row.
Bulk import - paste an existing .env and preview the merge before saving. Export serialises your rows back to .env text.

It's all scriptable from the terminal too - for example, upsert a couple of variables:

CLI

pyvolt env myapp.com set SECRET_KEY=xxxx DEBUG=False

See the CLI reference for the full set: list, get, set and rm.

Platform-managed variables

Pyvolt injects a few variables itself - they're shown read-only and can't be overridden by your rows:

Variable	Value
`PYVOLT_HOST`	The app's domain - handy for `ALLOWED_HOSTS` / `CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS`
`DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE`	Your configured settings module (Django apps)

Where the variables apply

The same .env is loaded by:

your app process (the start command),
every background process (workers, schedulers, and any command),
every scheduled job (cron commands).

One file, one truth - a worker never sees a different environment than the web process.

Release commands (opt-in)

Release-command steps (migrations, collectstatic) run with a minimal environment by default. If a step needs your variables - the classic case is manage.py migrate reading DATABASE_URL - turn on Expose to release commands at the bottom of this tab (or when creating the app, under its env rows). Apps configured by pyvolt.toml set it in the file instead:

[app]
release_env = true

Why opt-in: many release steps never need secrets, and the tighter default means a leaky build script or verbose migration log can't accidentally print one. Flip it on when your release steps read config from the environment.

Databases

Selecting or creating a Postgres database on the app-create form adds a DATABASE_URL row automatically (the generated password appears only there - masked). For an existing database the password segment is left for you to fill in.

View this page as markdown - handy as context for your AI tools. Full index at /llms.txt.