Bolt environment variable reference - Bolt

Environment variables let you configure Bolt without touching any config files — useful in CI pipelines, Docker containers, and shared environments where you cannot commit credentials. They are read once at startup and cannot be changed while Bolt is running.

Reference

Variable	Description
`BOLT_LOG_LEVEL`	Set the log verbosity. Accepted values: `DEBUG`, `INFO`, `WARN`, `ERROR`. Equivalent to the `--log-level` flag.
`BOLT_PRINT_LOGS`	Set to any non-empty value to print log output to stderr. Equivalent to `--print-logs`.
`BOLT_PURE`	Set to any non-empty value to disable all external plugins. Equivalent to `--pure`.
`BOLT_SERVER_USERNAME`	Basic auth username for `bolt serve` and `bolt web`.
`BOLT_SERVER_PASSWORD`	Basic auth password for `bolt serve` and `bolt web`. All connecting clients must provide this password.
`BOLT_CONFIG`	Override the path to the config file that Bolt loads. Bolt will not search the default locations when this is set.
`BOLT_CONFIG_DIR`	Override the config directory. Bolt will look for config files in this directory instead of the default OS config directory.
`BOLT_CONFIG_CONTENT`	Provide the entire config as an inline JSON string. Useful in CI where writing files is impractical. Takes the highest precedence among config sources.
`BOLT_GIT_BASH_PATH`	Path to Git Bash’s `bin` directory on Windows, used to locate Unix utilities like `less`.

Provider API keys

Bolt discovers provider credentials from environment variables automatically — no bolt providers login step required. Each provider looks for a specific environment variable, and Bolt will use it if the variable is set, regardless of what is stored in auth.json.

Set provider API keys in your shell profile (e.g. ~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc) or in a .env file loaded by your shell. You can also reference them from the config file using the ${VAR_NAME} syntax in a provider.*.apiKey field so that keys are never stored in plaintext.

Common provider variables:

Variable	Provider
`ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`	Anthropic (Claude)
`OPENAI_API_KEY`	OpenAI (GPT, o-series)
`GOOGLE_GENERATIVE_AI_API_KEY`	Google (Gemini)
`OPENROUTER_API_KEY`	OpenRouter
`AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID` + `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY`	Amazon Bedrock
`AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY`	Azure OpenAI

Run bolt models --verbose to see which environment variable each configured provider expects.

Usage examples

# Enable debug logging for a single run
BOLT_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG bolt run "why is the auth test failing?"

# Run without any plugins to rule out plugin interference
BOLT_PURE=1 bolt

# Start a public server with basic auth
BOLT_SERVER_USERNAME=team BOLT_SERVER_PASSWORD=mysecret \
  bolt serve --hostname 0.0.0.0 --port 4096

# Provide config inline (useful in CI)
BOLT_CONFIG_CONTENT='{"model":"anthropic/claude-opus-4-5"}' \
  ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-xxx \
  bolt run "generate a changelog for this release"