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Environment Variables

You can pass encrypted environment variables to your Acurast deployments. They are encrypted at deployment time and only decrypted when the code runs on a processor. Useful for API keys and other secrets.

Setup​

1. Add variables to your local .env file:

API_KEY=your-api-key

2. Reference them in acurast.json:

{
  "projects": {
    "my-project": {
      "includeEnvironmentVariables": ["API_KEY"]
    }
  }
}

See the Deployment Config reference for all config fields.

3. Access them in your deployment code:

On acurast deploy, the listed variables are encrypted and attached to the deployment automatically. How you access them in your code depends on the runtime environment:

Node.js Runtime Environment

const API_KEY = _STD_.env.API_KEY;

Cargo Runtime Environment

In the Cargo runtime, environment variables are available as standard system environment variables on the deployment's distro image. For example, in Node.js:

const API_KEY = process.env.API_KEY;

Rotating variables between executions​

For interval-based deployments with multiple executions, you can update environment variables between runs. Edit .env and then:

acurast deployments <id> --update-env-vars

This is useful for rotating API keys on a schedule without redeploying the script.

Programmatic access (SDK)​

When using the SDK, the same workflow is available via setEnvVars and JobEnvironmentService from @acurast/sdk/chain.

See also​