Environment variables

Configuration for DeployDock is driven by environment variables consumed by apps/api (NestJS) and apps/worker (BullMQ). Local defaults live in apps/api/.env.example in your deploy-dock source checkout.

In this page

• API (apps/api)
• Worker (apps/worker)
• Docker Compose overrides
• Security notes

API (apps/api)

Variable	Required	Default (example)	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	Yes	postgresql://panel:panel@127.0.0.1:5432/panel	PostgreSQL connection string for Prisma.
REDIS_HOST	For queue	127.0.0.1	Redis host for BullMQ when the queue module is loaded.
REDIS_PORT	For queue	6379	Redis port.
JWT_ACCESS_SECRET	Yes	change-me-to-long-random	Secret used to sign JWT access tokens. Use a long random value in production.
JWT_ACCESS_TTL	No	15m	Access token lifetime (string parsed by the auth layer).
PANEL_SECRETS_KEY	Yes	change-me-32-byte-or-longer-secret	Key material for AES-256-GCM encryption of sensitive values (e.g. database user passwords at rest).
PANEL_WEB_ORIGIN	Yes (CORS)	http://127.0.0.1:5173	Allowed browser origin(s) for CORS; in prod Docker samples use http://localhost:8080. Comma-separated list is supported in code.
PANEL_API_PORT	No	4000	HTTP listen port for the API process.
PANEL_DRY_RUN	No	0	When 1, runtime adapters avoid destructive OS mutations (useful for demos; worker compose often sets 1).
PANEL_DISABLE_QUEUE	No	0	When 1, the BullMQ panel queue module is not loaded. Application create/deploy then call finishDeployLocal on the API (marks deployment success without running the worker pipeline).
PANEL_APPS_ROOT	No	/var/www/deploy-dock-apps	Base path used when computing per-application installPath ({root}/{serverId}/{slugified-name}).
PANEL_FILES_ROOT	No	/var/www	Documented default for file-manager roots in .env.example (behavior depends on files service implementation).

Secrets (JWT_ACCESS_SECRET, PANEL_SECRETS_KEY) should be rotated on a schedule that matches your policy. Never commit real .env files.

Worker (apps/worker)

The worker reads the following from the environment (see apps/worker/src/main.ts):

Variable	Required	Default	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	Yes	(set in Compose)	Prisma access to the same database as the API.
REDIS_HOST	Yes	127.0.0.1	BullMQ Redis host.
REDIS_PORT	No	6379	BullMQ Redis port.
REDIS_PASSWORD	No	unset	Optional Redis password passed to BullMQ connection.
PANEL_DRY_RUN	No	0	Passed into adapter context as dryRun for provision/build/start steps.

The API does not list REDIS_PASSWORD in .env.example; add it when your Redis instance requires auth.

Docker Compose overrides

• Dev stack (deploy/docker/docker-compose.yml): sets DATABASE_URL, REDIS_*, JWT_ACCESS_SECRET, PANEL_SECRETS_KEY, PANEL_WEB_ORIGIN, PANEL_DISABLE_QUEUE for api; worker gets PANEL_DRY_RUN=1 by default.
• Prod-style stack (deploy/docker/docker-compose.prod.yml): supports shell defaults for JWT_ACCESS_SECRET, PANEL_SECRETS_KEY, PANEL_WEB_ORIGIN, PANEL_DRY_RUN via ${VAR:-default} patterns in the compose file.

Security notes

From the monorepo README: database user secrets at rest use AES-256-GCM via PANEL_SECRETS_KEY. OS-level operations are intended to go through allowlisted commands in @deploydock/command-runner. Prefer PANEL_DRY_RUN=1 when demonstrating the stack without mutating the host.

For the canonical list of keys as checked into the repo, open deploy-dock/apps/api/.env.example.