Groq Multi-Environment Setup

Overview

Configure Groq API access across development, staging, and production with the right model, rate limit strategy, and secret management per environment. Key insight: use llama-3.1-8b-instant in development (cheapest, fastest), match production model in staging, and harden production with retries and fallbacks.

Prerequisites

• A Groq account with API keys from console.groq.com/keys — ideally a separate key (or organization) per environment.
• Node project with the groq-sdk package installed (npm install groq-sdk).
• NODE_ENV set per environment (development / staging / production).
• A secret store for staging/production keys: GitHub Actions secrets, AWS Secrets Manager, GCP Secret Manager, or HashiCorp Vault.

Environment Strategy