Environment Variable Overrides

Environment variables provide the highest-priority configuration layer. They're useful for temporary overrides, CI/CD environments, and sensitive values.

Global Overrides

# Default provider and model
export ZEN_DEFAULT_PROVIDER="deepseek"
export ZEN_DEFAULT_MODEL="deepseek-v4-flash"

Per-Agent Overrides

Override specific agent routing without modifying any config files:

# Force notion_extraction to use local Ollama
export ZEN_AGENT_NOTION_EXTRACTION_PROVIDER="ollama"

# Override synthesis agent's model
export ZEN_AGENT_SYNTHESIS_MODEL="claude-sonnet-4-6"

# Override dispatch agent
export ZEN_AGENT_DISPATCH_PROVIDER="anthropic"
export ZEN_AGENT_DISPATCH_MODEL="claude-sonnet-4-6"

Supported agent env var targets:

Env VarEffect
ZEN_AGENT_NOTION_EXTRACTION_PROVIDEROverride notion_extraction provider
ZEN_AGENT_NOTION_EXTRACTION_MODELOverride notion_extraction model
ZEN_AGENT_CONTRADICTION_DETECTION_PROVIDEROverride contradiction detection provider
ZEN_AGENT_CONTRADICTION_DETECTION_MODELOverride contradiction detection model
ZEN_AGENT_SYNTHESIS_PROVIDEROverride synthesis provider
ZEN_AGENT_SYNTHESIS_MODELOverride synthesis model
ZEN_AGENT_DISPATCH_PROVIDEROverride dispatch provider
ZEN_AGENT_DISPATCH_MODELOverride dispatch model

Cron Overrides

export ZEN_CRON_CONSOLIDATION_TIME="03:00"
export ZEN_CRON_TIMEZONE="America/New_York"
export ZEN_CRON_SUBCONSCIOUS_INTERVAL_MINUTES=10

Plugin Overrides

export ZEN_PLUGIN_BASE_PATH="/custom/plugin/path"
export ZEN_PLUGIN_WASM_CACHE_PATH="/custom/cache/path"
export ZEN_LEARNING_AUTO_RESEARCH="true"
export ZEN_LEARNING_INTERVAL="weekly"
export ZEN_FINANCE_BASE_CURRENCY="USD"

API Key Environment Variables

# Set API keys for providers
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."
export DEEPSEEK_API_KEY="sk-..."
export DASHSCOPE_API_KEY="sk-..."
export GEMINI_API_KEY="..."
export COHERE_API_KEY="..."
export MISTRAL_API_KEY="..."
export GROQ_API_KEY="gsk_..."
export MOONSHOT_API_KEY="..."
export XAI_API_KEY="..."
export PERPLEXITY_API_KEY="..."

Priority Rules

  1. Explicit api_key.env in provider config takes precedence over auto-derived names
  2. Environment variables override both global and workspace config files
  3. Per-agent env vars override the agent's provider/model settings
  4. Set env vars in .env file (loaded automatically) or export them in your shell profile

Next: Configuration Examples