An environment is a set of environment variables — and secrets — that your agents and pipelines run with. Environments are split by runtime, and runtimes can inherit from one another. This article covers how they're organized and how to apply them.
Environments and runtimes
An environment holds variables, and you split them by where they're used — the runtime:
- Global — the app running itself, including background processes.
- Agents — variables passed to the agents doing your work.
- Pipelines — variables passed to agents running inside pipelines.
The app comes with a few of these out of the box.
Inheritance
There's an overall environment that the others inherit from by default, so a value you set once can flow down to every runtime. You can define as many environments as you need and control how they inherit — set shared values at the top, then override or add per-runtime below.
Secrets and editing
Mark any variable as a secret so its value stays hidden. Edit variables one at a time (key-value) or in bulk, and use the Resolved Variables view to see the final values a runtime will actually use once inheritance is applied.
Apply an environment to a workspace
Once your environments are set up, choose which ones a workspace uses. From then on, its agents and pipelines run with those values.
Next steps
- Skills & plugins — the other half of configuring how agents work.
- Create your first worktree — where setup scripts and environments come together.
- Core concepts & vocabulary — the terms behind these settings.