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thndrs

Environment Variables

Environment variables serve two separate purposes:

  • Ordinary configuration overrides use the THNDRS_ prefix.
  • Provider secrets use provider-specific variable names.

Unknown THNDRS_ variables are errors. This catches misspelled overrides rather than silently running with a lower-precedence value.

Ordinary Config Overrides

Section titled “Ordinary Config Overrides”

These variables override TOML config files and built-in defaults. CLI flags still override environment variables.

Variable Value
THNDRS_MODEL Completion model string.
THNDRS_WEBSEARCH duckduckgo, searxng, or none.
THNDRS_WEBSEARCH_URL HTTP(S) SearXNG base URL; required when THNDRS_WEBSEARCH=searxng.
THNDRS_REASONING_EFFORT Model-specific reasoning control:
auto, on, none, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, or max.
THNDRS_REASONING_SUMMARY off or auto for GPT-5.6 summaries.
THNDRS_TICK_RATE_MS Positive integer milliseconds.
THNDRS_THEME eldritch-minimal, iceberg-dark, or catppuccin-mocha.
THNDRS_MOUSE Boolean1
THNDRS_VERBOSE Boolean
THNDRS_SKILL_DIRS Path list using the platform path separator.
THNDRS_SESSION_DIR Session JSONL directory path.
THNDRS_DEFAULT_WORKSPACE Workspace path used when --cwd is omitted.

Examples:

Terminal window
export THNDRS_MODEL=umans-coder
export THNDRS_WEBSEARCH=duckduckgo
export THNDRS_WEBSEARCH_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080
export THNDRS_VERBOSE=on
export THNDRS_SESSION_DIR="$HOME/.local/share/thndrs/sessions"

On Unix-like systems, path lists use ::

Terminal window
export THNDRS_SKILL_DIRS="$HOME/skills:$PWD/vendor/agent-skills"

On Windows, path lists use ;.

Provider Secrets

Section titled “Provider Secrets”

Provider secrets are not ordinary config keys. They may be read from the process environment, managed credential stores, or a workspace .env file, but they are not serialized into effective config, prompt inspection, sessions, snapshots, or export metadata.

API-key provider credential lookup precedence is:

  1. Process environment.
  2. Global credential store: ~/.thndrs/credentials.env.
  3. Project credential store: .thndrs/credentials.env.
  4. Workspace .env file for compatibility.

Use thndrs login <provider>, thndrs logout <provider>, and thndrs auth status to manage stored provider credentials. Project credential stores are added to .git/info/exclude when possible.

ChatGPT Codex is different: normal setup and login use ChatGPT OAuth and store refreshable credentials in ~/.thndrs/auth.json. The CHATGPT_CODEX_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable is only a process-local override for automation and debugging.

UMANS_API_KEY

Section titled “UMANS_API_KEY”

API key used by the Umans provider.

Terminal window
export UMANS_API_KEY=sk-...

OPENCODE_GO_KEY

Section titled “OPENCODE_GO_KEY”

API key used by the OpenCode Go provider.

Terminal window
export OPENCODE_GO_KEY=sk-...

OPENCODE_ZEN_KEY

Section titled “OPENCODE_ZEN_KEY”

API key used by the OpenCode Zen provider for opencode/<model-id> models such as opencode/big-pickle.

Terminal window
export OPENCODE_ZEN_KEY=sk-...

OPENCODE_ZEN_KEY is separate from OPENCODE_GO_KEY; the two OpenCode provider families use different model prefixes and credential slots.

CHATGPT_CODEX_ACCESS_TOKEN

Section titled “CHATGPT_CODEX_ACCESS_TOKEN”

Ephemeral access-token override for chatgpt-codex/<model-id> models.

Terminal window
export CHATGPT_CODEX_ACCESS_TOKEN=...

This value is used only for the current process and is not written to ~/.thndrs/auth.json. It is not the normal setup path. Use thndrs setup --provider chatgpt-codex or thndrs login chatgpt-codex to create or refresh local ChatGPT OAuth credentials.

Do not use TOML keys such as umans_api_key, auth_token, secret, or password. Secret-shaped TOML keys are rejected; provider code owns provider secret loading and redaction.

Footnotes

Section titled “Footnotes”

  1. Boolean values accept 1, 0, true, false, yes, no, on, and off, case-insensitively. ↩