Environment Variables

Overview

The purpose of this page is to list in detail each of the environment variables that are required to launch neosync services. There are three discrete services in Neosync, and each one has its own purpose. See the Platform Overview section of the docs to understand more about the makeup of Neosync.

Backend API

These environment variables are loaded when running the mgmt serve connect command which starts the main API instance.

Variable	Description	Required	Default Value
DB_HOST	The database host	true
DB_PORT	The port used to connect to the database	true
DB_NAME	The name of the database	true
DB_USER	The username that will be used to connect to the database	true
DB_PASS	The password that will be used by the DB_USER to connect to the database	true
DB_SSL_DISABLE	Postgres requires SSL by default. Set this to "true" to disable SSL, which is useful for dev environments	false	false
DB_AUTO_MIGRATE	If true, will automatically run the database migrations prior to startup. Only loaded if DB_AUTO_MIGRATE is set to "true"	false	false
DB_SCHEMA_DIR	The directory where the migrations scripts are found.	false
HOST	The host that will be used when binding the HTTP server. Set this to "0.0.0.0" for production environments	false	127.0.0.1
PORT	The port that will be used to bind the HTTP server	false	8080
NUCLEUS_ENV	The environment that is being deployed to. Useful for metrics	false	unknown
SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	Configures the graceful shutdown of a pod in Kubernetes	false
LOGS_FORMAT_JSON	Whether or not to format logs in JSON or in plaintext to stdout	false	true
AUTH_ENABLED	Whether or not to enable authentication in the API. Should be required for any production environment	false	false
AUTH_BASEURL	The base URL for the authentication server. This is used to find the JWKS URL to validate JWT tokens	false
AUTH_EXPECTED_ISS	The public base url for the authentication server. This is used to validate incoming JWT token "iss" claims. Only needed if the backend communicates internally with the auth server.	false
AUTH_AUDIENCE	The audience that is to be used for validating JWT tokens. Can pass multiple values using a comma separator	true	false
AUTH_CLIENTID_SECRET	This is a JSON stringified map of clientId:secret used to validate authentication requests for JWT tokens	false
AUTH_CLI_AUDIENCE	Used to validate which audience the CLI is to use to make requests to the API server	false
AUTH_SIGNATURE_ALGORITHM	Expected algorithm the JWT will have been encoded with.	false
TEMPORAL_URL	The URL used to connect to the temporal instance	false	RS256
TEMPORAL_CERT_KEY_PATH	The path where the API can find the mTLS certificate key to authenticate against Temporal	false
TEMPORAL_CERT_PATH	The path where the API can find the mTLS certificate to authenticate against Temporal	false
TEMPORAL_CERT	The Temporal mTLS certificate contents	false
TEMPORAL_CERT_KEY	The Temporal mTLS certificate key contents	false
TEMPORAL_DEFAULT_NAMESPACE	The default temporal namespace used for any new account	false	default
TEMPORAL_DEFAULT_SYNCJOB_QUEUE	The default Temporal queue name for Neosync jobs	false	sync-job
AUTH_API_CLIENT_ID	The clientID that the API uses to connect to Auth0 to retrieve user data	false
AUTH_API_CLIENT_SECRET	The client secret that the API uses to connect to Auth0.	false
AUTH_API_BASEURL	The base URL of the authentication server used for management operations by the API	false

Backend API Database Migrations

These environment variables are loaded when running the mgmt migrate up command which runs database migrations.

Variable	Description	Required	Default Value
DB_HOST	The database host	true
DB_PORT	The port used to connect to the database	true
DB_NAME	The name of the database	true
DB_USER	The username that will be used to connect to the database	true
DB_PASS	The password that will be used by the DB_USER to connect to the database	true
DB_SSL_DISABLE	Postgres requires SSL by default. Set this to "true" to disable SSL, which is useful for dev environments	false	false
DB_SCHEMA_DIR	The directory where the migrations scripts are found.	false
DB_MIGRATIONS_TABLE	The name of the table where the migrations will be tracked. Useful if you want to override the default, or put into a different schema	false
DB_MIGRATIONS_TABLE_QUOTED	If the table set in DB_MIGRATIONS_TABLE contains quotes	false

Frontend App

Variable	Description	Is Required	Default Value
AUTH_ENABLED	Whether or not to enable authentication in the App. Should be required for any production environment	false	false
NEXTAUTH_URL	This the base url that the app will be accessible from. Note: this is not the base url for the auth service, but for the app itself. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true	false
NEXTAUTH_SECRET	This is a secret value that is used to encrypt the next-auth cookie that is stored in the browser. This should change per environment.	true
AUTH_CLIENT_ID	The client id that will be used to authenticate via the configured auth provider. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true	false
AUTH_CLIENT_SECRET	The client secret that will be used to authenticate via the configured auth provider. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true	false
AUTH_ISSUER	The issuer url. This is typically the baseurl for the auth instance. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true	false
AUTH_EXPECTED_ISSUER	The frontend issuer url. This is typically used if the auth service is accessed behind a proxy, or if the backend uses an internal url to access the auth service, but the client needs a different, public url. Common in networked or docker environments where the backend uses a cluster-local dns entry, while the client needs a public url	false
AUTH_SCOPE	The space separated list of scopes that will be requested when issuing an access token. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true	false
AUTH_AUDIENCE	The audience that will be used when requesting the access token. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true true	false
AUTH_PROVIDER_ID	The id of your provider. This is used by next-auth to identify the provider. This can really be anything you want. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true.	false
AUTH_PROVIDER_NAME	The name of your provider. This is used on the next-auth signin page and appears in the button text that a user will select. Required if AUTH_ENABLED is true.	false
NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_BASE_URL	The url of the app. This is typically the same as NEXTAUTH_URL. Used for generating invite urls, among other things. This is not baked into the HTML or the image.	false
NEOSYNC_API_BASE_URL	The base url of the Neosync API. This can be overridden to connect to different Neosync API environments	false	http://localhost:8080
AUTH_AUTHORIZE_URL	The full url that routes to the authorize url. This is optional and may be necessary if you're using AUTH_EXPECTED_ISSUER as the urls will be different. This will need to include the public url (same value as AUTH_EXPECTED_ISSUER). If using a fully external auth provider, this will most likely not be needed.	false
AUTH_USERINFO_URL	The full url that routes to the userinfo url. This is optional and may be necessary if you're using AUTH_EXPECTED_ISSUER as the urls will be different. This will most likely need to include the internal url (same value as AUTH_ISSUER). If using a fully external auth provider, this will most likely not be needed.	false
AUTH_TOKEN_URL	The full url that routes to the token url. This is optional and may be necessary if you're using AUTH_EXPECTED_ISSUER as the urls will be different. This will most likely need to include the internal url (same value as AUTH_ISSUER). If using a fully external auth provider, this will most likely not be needed.	false
NEOSYNC_ANALYTICS_ENABLED	Enables analytics within the Neosync app. Disable to turn off all analytics.	false	true
POSTHOG_KEY	API key used to send analytics to Posthog. Without this, analytics will be disabled, even if NEOSYNC_ANALYTICS_ENABLED is set to true.	false	Neosync's posthog api key
POSTHOG_HOST	Used to change the host of the Posthog instance that analytics are shipped to. Only needed if self-hosting Posthog or not shipping to the default Posthog platform.	false	https://app.posthog.com

Worker

These environment variables are loaded when running the worker serve command which starts the main worker instance.

Variable	Description	Is Required	Default Value
HOST	The host that will be used when binding the http server. Set this to "0.0.0.0" for production environments	false	127.0.0.1
PORT	The port that will be used to bind the http server	false	8080
TEMPORAL_URL	The url used to connect to the temporal instance	false	localhost:7233
TEMPORAL_NAMESPACE	The Temporal namespace to connect to	false	default
TEMPORAL_TASK_QUEUE	The Temporal task queue name to connect to for Neosync jobs	true
TEMPORAL_CERT_KEY_PATH	The path on the filesystem where the worker can find the mTLS certificate key it will use to authenticate against Temporal. This will be used over the TEMPORAL_CERT_KEY environment variable	false
TEMPORAL_CERT_PATH	The path on the filesystem where the worker can find the mTLS certificate that will be used to authenticate against Temporal. This will be used over the TEMPORAL_CERT environment variable	false
TEMPORAL_CERT	The Temporal mTLS certificate contents. Use this if you want to load contents directly instead of mounting them to the filesystem	false
TEMPORAL_CERT_KEY	The Temporal mTLS certificate key contents. Use this if you want to load the contents directly instead of mounting them to the filesystem	false
NEOSYNC_URL	The base url of the Neosync API that the worker will use to connect to	false	localhost:8080
NEOSYNC_API_KEY	The API key that will be provided as a bearer token in the Authentication header when making requests to the Neosync API	false

CLI

There are some environment variables that the CLI accepts to override default behavior to accommodate different environments.

Variable	Description	Is Required	Default Value
NEOSYNC_API_URL	The base url of the Neosync API. This can be overridden to connect to different Neosync API environments	false	http://localhost:8080
NEOSYNC_API_KEY	The api key for Neosync API.	false
LOGIN_HOST	The http server that is booted up running neosync login via an oauth flow	false	127.0.0.1
LOGIN_REDIRECT_HOST	The redirect host that is sent alongside the oauth flow when running neosync login	false	127.0.0.1
LOGIN_PORT	The port the http server runs on when running neosync login	false	4242
NEOSYNC_CONFIG_DIR	The config directory to store Neosync-specific credentials. For Linux users, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is also respected.	false	~/.neosync