An environment variable in Node.js is accessed in your code using process.env.MY_ENV_VAR. We deploy your tasks and scale them up and down when they are triggered. So any environment variables you use in your tasks need to accessible to us so your code will run successfully.

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In the dashboard

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Setting environment variables

1

Go to the Environment Variables page

In the sidebar select the “Environment Variables” page, then press the “New environment variable” button. Environment variables page
2

Add your environment variables

You can add values for your local dev environment, staging and prod. Environment variables page
Specifying Dev values is optional. They will be overriden by values in your .env file when running locally.

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Editing environment variables

You can edit an environment variable’s values. You cannot edit the key name, you must delete and create a new one.
1

Press the action button on a variable

Environment variables page
2

Press edit

Environment variables page

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Deleting environment variables

1

Press the action button on a variable

Environment variables page
2

Press delete

This will immediately delete the variable. Environment variables page

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In your code

You can use our SDK to get and manipulate environment variables. You can also easily sync environment variables from another service into Trigger.dev.

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Directly manipulating environment variables

We have a complete set of SDK functions (and REST API) you can use to directly manipulate environment variables.
FunctionDescription
envvars.list()List all environment variables
envvars.upload()Upload multiple env vars. You can override existing values.
envvars.create()Create a new environment variable
envvars.retrieve()Retrieve an environment variable
envvars.update()Update a single environment variable
envvars.del()Delete a single environment variable

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Sync env vars from another service

You could use the SDK functions above but it’s much easier to use our syncEnvVars build extension in your trigger.config file.
To use the syncEnvVars build extension, you should first install the @trigger.dev/build package into your devDependencies.
In this example we’re using env vars from Infisical.
trigger.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { syncEnvVars } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/core";
import { InfisicalSDK } from "@infisical/sdk";

export default defineConfig({
  build: {
    extensions: [
      syncEnvVars(async (ctx) => {
        const client = new InfisicalSDK();

        await client.auth().universalAuth.login({
          clientId: process.env.INFISICAL_CLIENT_ID!,
          clientSecret: process.env.INFISICAL_CLIENT_SECRET!,
        });

        const { secrets } = await client.secrets().listSecrets({
          environment: ctx.environment,
          projectId: process.env.INFISICAL_PROJECT_ID!,
        });

        return secrets.map((secret) => ({
          name: secret.secretKey,
          value: secret.secretValue,
        }));
      }),
    ],
  },
});

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Syncing environment variables from Vercel

To sync environment variables from your Vercel projects to Trigger.dev, you can use our build extension. Check out our syncing environment variables from Vercel guide.

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Deploy

When you run the CLI deploy command directly or using GitHub Actions it will sync the environment variables from Infisical to Trigger.dev. This means they’ll appear on the Environment Variables page so you can confirm that it’s worked. This means that you need to redeploy your Trigger.dev tasks if you change the environment variables in Infisical.
The process.env.INFISICAL_CLIENT_ID, process.env.INFISICAL_CLIENT_SECRET and process.env.INFISICAL_PROJECT_ID will need to be supplied to the deploy CLI command. You can do this via the --env-file .env flag or by setting them as environment variables in your terminal.

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Dev

syncEnvVars does not have any effect when running the dev command locally. If you want to inject environment variables from another service into your local environment you can do so via a .env file or just supplying them as environment variables in your terminal. Most services will have a CLI tool that allows you to run a command with environment variables set: 
infisical run -- npx trigger.dev@latest dev
Any environment variables set in the CLI command will be available to your local Trigger.dev tasks.

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The syncEnvVars callback return type

You can return env vars as an object with string keys and values, or an array of names + values. 
return {
  MY_ENV_VAR: "my value",
  MY_OTHER_ENV_VAR: "my other value",
};
or 
return [
  {
    name: "MY_ENV_VAR",
    value: "my value",
  },
  {
    name: "MY_OTHER_ENV_VAR",
    value: "my other value",
  },
];
This should mean that for most secret services you won’t need to convert the data into a different format.

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Using Google credential JSON files

Securely pass a Google credential JSON file to your Trigger.dev task using environment variables.
1

Convert the Google credential file to base64

In your terminal, run the following command and copy the resulting base64 string:
base64 -i path/to/your/service-account-file.json
2

Set up the environment variable in Trigger.dev

Follow these steps to set a new environment variable using the base64 string as the value.
GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_BASE64="<your base64 string>"
3

Use the environment variable in your code

Add the following code to your Trigger.dev task:
import { google } from "googleapis";

const credentials = JSON.parse(
  Buffer.from(process.env.GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_BASE64, "base64").toString("utf8")
);

const auth = new google.auth.GoogleAuth({
  credentials,
  scopes: ["https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform"],
});

const client = await auth.getClient();
4

Use the client in your code

You can now use the client object to make authenticated requests to Google APIs