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Akter Cloud stores customer environment values encrypted. You can list names and update times, but cannot read values back through the console or API. Keep an independent secure copy of secrets you may need again. Variables belong to a project and environment. Changes take effect on the next deployment. The examples use production explicitly; without --env, the CLI also defaults to production. Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID. With Node, substitute npx akter for bunx akter.

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List, set and unset

set reads the file’s contents verbatim, including a trailing newline. Create the file securely outside your deployment context. Values are never accepted as command arguments. You can instead pipe input to set; an interactive terminal without --file is refused so a secret is not echoed while you type it. Setting an existing name replaces its value. Unsetting a customer variable removes it from future captures; neither action changes a running deployment.

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Import a dotenv file

The import creates new names and updates existing ones atomically. It does not remove names omitted from the file. Invalid input rejects the entire import. -, or no file argument, reads from stdin. Use one NAME=value per line, optionally prefixed with export. Blank lines and lines starting with # are ignored. Single or double quotes surrounding a value are stripped. There is no shell expansion, escape decoding or multiline-value syntax, and duplicate names are rejected. An inline # is part of an unquoted value, not a comment.

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Naming and size rules

  • Names begin with a letter or _, followed by letters, digits or _, with at most 256 characters.
  • A value cannot contain a NUL character. The CLI accepts at most 64 KiB of UTF-8 input for one value and 1 MiB for a dotenv import.
  • You cannot set or remove platform-managed names such as DEPLOYMENT_ID and FLY_API_TOKEN, or names beginning with AKTER_, ASSERTION_ or RUNNER_. DATABASE_URL is a customer variable on every plan.

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Database connection

Every environment on every plan requires your own DATABASE_URL before deploying. Akter does not provision a database or supply this value. akter env list lists its name and update metadata only. Like every secret, the URL cannot be read back. Use a direct, non-pooled Postgres URL. Transaction-pooler URLs are refused because the runtime requires session semantics. The URL must use postgres:// or postgresql://, include a host, omit fragments and raw whitespace or control characters, and contain exactly one sslmode of require, verify-ca or verify-full. See Connect your Postgres for TLS and migration permissions. Invalid input is refused without echoing the URL.
Store only the URL in that secure file, without quotes or a trailing newline, and keep it outside the deployment directory. Values remain file/stdin input, not positional command arguments. Unsetting DATABASE_URL is allowed on every plan. It leaves a running deployment on its captured connection and never touches your database, but the next deploy is refused until you set it again. There is no fallback database or plan-based exception. Changing the URL does not copy data; after setting it, deploy again to use the new connection. To remove the connection from future deployments: