Environment variables

Keys go in the household’s .env file, which only you can read. The setup commands write them for you.

Variable	What it’s for
<PROVIDER>_API_KEY	The key for each AI provider your models use, named after it: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, MISTRAL_API_KEY…
OPENAI_API_KEY	Also Picture Studio’s OpenAI image model.
GEMINI_API_KEY	Your Google key: Gemini models, and Picture Studio’s Google image model.
IMAGE_PROVIDER	Picks the image provider when more than one is set up.
IMAGE_MODEL	Picks the image model.
BRAVE_API_KEY	Brave Search, for looking things up.
TAVILY_API_KEY	Tavily, for looking things up.
SEARXNG_BASE_URL	Your own SearXNG server, for looking things up.
OPENBUDDIES_SEARCH_PROVIDER	Picks the search provider when more than one is set up. Otherwise the first one set up is used, then the next if it fails.
OPENBUDDIES_HOME	Where the household folder is (in your shell, not .env).