Environment Variables Reference

Navin reads API keys and behavior overrides from the process environment. Exporting a variable is enough - no config edit, no import step:

# Linux / macOS / WSL
export KIMI_API_KEY="sk-..."
navin .

# PowerShell
$env:KIMI_API_KEY = "sk-..."
navin .

Precedence - for each provider, the first source that carries a value wins:

1. the key stored in Settings > Providers (config.json);
2. the provider's primary environment variable;
3. its aliases (the names other tools use - Claude Code, OpenCode, Hermes…), in the order listed below.

Keys found in the environment are used for the request only and are never written to config.json.

LLM Provider API Keys

The table derives from the provider registry (navin/providers/registry.py) - a test keeps it in sync.

OAuth providers (OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Grok x.ai subscription) and Azure OpenAI / OpenVINO / Custom endpoints don't use these variables - they authenticate through their own flow or through Settings.

Project Configuration Discovery (no variables needed)

Skills, subagents and instruction files carried by the repository are read natively on every request - nothing to export or import:

• Skills: skills/, plus <harness>/skills/ for every harness folder (.navin, .agents, .claude, .cursor, .opencode, .codex, .omp, .ai). Symlinked skill directories (mirror layouts like .agents/skills/) are followed.
• Subagents: <harness>/agents/ and OpenCode's singular <harness>/agent/, scanned recursively (category layouts like .ai/agents/<category>/<name>.md work as-is). Markdown-with-frontmatter and Codex TOML (name / description / developer_instructions) are both parsed.
• Instructions: AGENTS.md (plus SOUL.md, USER.md); CLAUDE.md is honored when no AGENTS.md exists, and Claude Code's @path import lines are resolved in both.
• A skill's own requires.env frontmatter is checked against the process environment, so skills that need e.g. NOTION_API_KEY report exactly which variable is missing.

Navin Runtime Overrides (NAVIN_*)

Optional knobs; most users never set any of these.