Environment Variables

The mycli API server reads all configuration from environment variables.

Server configuration

Variable	Default	Description
DATABASE_URL	postgres://mycli:mycli@localhost:5432/mycli_dev?sslmode=disable	PostgreSQL connection string
PORT	8080	Server listen port
JWT_SECRET	dev-secret-change-me	Secret for signing JWTs
BASE_URL	http://localhost:8080	Public base URL (used in magic link emails)
RESEND_API_KEY	(empty)	Resend API key for sending emails. When unset, emails are printed to stdout
EMAIL_FROM	mycli@updates.mycli.sh	Sender address for emails

Development setup

For local development:

# Start PostgreSQL
docker compose up -d

# Run with defaults (dev mode)
make dev

# Or set variables explicitly
DATABASE_URL="postgres://mycli:mycli@localhost:5432/mycli_dev?sslmode=disable" \
JWT_SECRET=dev-secret \
BASE_URL=http://localhost:8080 \
PORT=8080 \
./bin/api

Email behavior

When RESEND_API_KEY is not set, the API uses a log sender that prints magic link emails to stdout. This is useful for development — copy the verification URL from the console output.

When RESEND_API_KEY is set, emails are sent via the Resend API using the address specified in EMAIL_FROM.