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Environment Variables

This project uses environment variables to configure certain aspects of the application.

GITHUB_TOKEN

  • Used to authenticate with the GitHub API when making requests.
  • For local development, you should set this variable to a valid personal access token that has the necessary permissions to access the relevant repositories. Generate a new personal access token and replace the value for GITHUB_TOKEN in your .env file in order to connect to certain parts of the GitHub API.
  • In deployed environments, this should be set to a valid access token associated with the GitHub organization. Edit kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file) to change this value.

BOOST_GITHUB_ORG_NODE_ID

  • The GraphQL node ID of the GitHub org whose contributions the profile activity card counts.
  • Optional. Defaults to the boostorg org (O_kgDOADBg4Q), so neither local nor deployed environments need to set it.
  • Set it only to scope the card at a different org, such as a fork or a test org. To find the value for another org, query GitHub's GraphQL API for that org's id and use the next_global_id from the deprecation warning — both the REST node_id field and GraphQL's organization.id still return the older, deprecated ID format.

ENVIRONMENT_NAME

  • Used to indicate the name of the environment where the application is running.
  • For local development, set this to whatever you want.
  • In deployed environments, change the value by editing kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file).

STATIC_CONTENT_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

  • Used to authenticate with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API when accessing static content from a specified bucket.
  • For local development, obtain valid value from the Boost team.
  • In deployed environments, the valid value is set as a kube secret and is defined in kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file).

STATIC_CONTENT_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

  • Used to authenticate with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API when accessing static content from a specified bucket.
  • For local development, obtain valid value from the Boost team.
  • In deployed environments, the valid value is set as a kube secret and is defined in kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file).

STATIC_CONTENT_BUCKET_NAME

  • Specifies the name of the Amazon S3 bucket where static content is stored
  • For local development, obtain valid value from the Boost team.
  • In deployed environments, the valid value is set in kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file).

Boost Release Downloads Settings

ARTIFACTORY_URL (deprecated)

  • Base API endpoint for accessing the JFrog Artifactory release downloads. This is NOT the base URL for the downloads themselves.
  • For local development, there is a default value in config/settings.py
  • In deployed environments, the valid value is set in kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file).

ARCHIVES_URL

  • Base API endpoint for accessing the archives.boost.io release downloads.
  • For development and production, there is a default value in config/settings.py
  • Alternatively, the value can be set in kube/boost/values.yaml.

MIN_ARTIFACTORY_RELEASE

  • The lowest version of Boost with its downloads stored in JFrog Artifactory
  • Hard-coded in config/settings.py in all environments

Boost Google Calendar settings

BOOST_CALENDAR

  • Address for the Boost Google Calendar
  • Hard-coded in settings.py in all environments

CALENDAR_API_KEY

  • API key for the Boost Google calendar
  • For local development, obtain valid value from the Boost team.
  • In deployed environments, the valid value is set in kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file).

EVENTS_CACHE_KEY and EVENTS_CACHE_TIMEOUT

  • The cache key and timeout length for the Google Calendar events
  • Hard-coded in settings.py in all environments

CI

  • If set, will set SITE_ID to 1 in settings.py.

MAX_CELERY_CONNECTIONS

  • If set, will set the maximum number of connections to the Celery in settings.py. Defaults to 60.

SLACK_BOT_TOKEN

  • Used to authenticate with the Slack API for pulling data for release reports.

AI Summarization (OpenRouter)

OPENROUTER_API_KEY

  • API key for OpenRouter, used by the openai SDK to reach the LLM that powers two features:
    • News/blogpost/link entry summaries (news/tasks.py)
    • The Boost release-notes "What's New" draft summary (versions/tasks.py)
  • Default model is gpt-oss-120b. To use a different model (e.g. a Claude model via OpenRouter), change WHATS_NEW_MODEL in versions/tasks.py and the per-handler model strings in news/tasks.py.
  • For local development, set this in your .env file. Note: docker compose only loads env_file at container creation, so after adding the variable run docker compose up -d --force-recreate web celery-worker celery-beat to pick it up.
  • In deployed environments, set as a kube secret in kube/boost/values.yaml (or the environment-specific yaml file).
  • Without this variable set, OpenRouter responds with 401 No cookie auth credentials found and Celery retries the task up to 3 times before giving up.

PLAUSIBLE_STATS_KEY

  • API key for the Plausible Analytics API, used to sync per-post page view counts into Entry.page_views.
  • For local development, obtain a valid value from the Boost team.
  • In deployed environments, the valid value is set in the environment-specific secrets.
  • If not set (or set to changeme), the sync task is silently skipped.

POSTS_RANKING_GRAVITY

  • Controls the decay rate of the posts ranking algorithm (score = views / (age_hours + 2) ^ gravity).
  • Higher values cause recent posts to decay faster and drop in ranking sooner.
  • Defaults to 2.0 if not set.

Email settings

See Email Routing and the QA Inbox for how messages are routed in each environment.

CATCH_ALL_EMAIL

  • Routes every outbound message to the maildev SMTP sink instead of a real email service provider, so testing against real user accounts does not email real people.
  • For local development, not needed: LOCAL_DEVELOPMENT already sends to the maildev container.
  • In deployed environments, set to true in kube/boost/values-stage-gke.yaml and kube/boost/values-cppal-dev-gke.yaml. Defaults to false, and Django refuses to start if it is enabled while the environment looks like production (X_DEPLOYMENT_ENV is production, or ENVIRONMENT_NAME is Production Environment).
  • Only enable it where maildevInstall: true is also set, otherwise sends fail with a connection error.

EMAIL_BACKEND, EMAIL_HOST, EMAIL_PORT, EMAIL_TIMEOUT

  • EMAIL_HOST / EMAIL_PORT are where SMTP is delivered; they default to maildev and 1025.
  • EMAIL_TIMEOUT is the per-send socket timeout in seconds, defaulting to 10. Without it smtplib blocks indefinitely, so a sink that accepts the connection but never answers would stall the request thread or Celery worker sending the message rather than raising. Only read on the SMTP path, so the Mailgun backend is unaffected.
  • EMAIL_BACKEND is only read when local development or CATCH_ALL_EMAIL is active, and defaults to Django's SMTP backend. Everywhere else the Mailgun Anymail backend is used unconditionally.
  • Set EMAIL_HOST_USER, EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD and EMAIL_USE_TLS if you point these at a real SMTP provider instead.