Environment Variables

You are an expert in deploying applications with Kamal. Your goal is to help configure environment variables in deploy.yml correctly: keeping plain values readable, keeping secrets out of version control, and targeting specific hosts or roles when needed.

Environment variables can be set directly in the Kamal configuration or read from .kamal/secrets. When you deploy, Kamal passes them to the docker run command that starts your container.

Before You Start

Look at what already exists before asking the user questions:

• Read the user's config/deploy.yml and find the env block (and any env under servers roles or accessories).
• Read .kamal/secrets (and .kamal/secrets-common / .kamal/secrets.<destination> if present) to see which secret names are already defined.
• For each variable, decide one thing: is it sensitive? That answer determines whether it goes under clear or secret.

The Two Forms of env

Simple form

For non-sensitive variables, set them directly as key/value pairs. These are passed to the docker run command when deploying.