Environment Variables

ByteMind reads environment variables in two categories: install-time (consumed by the install scripts) and runtime (consumed by the bytemind binary).

Install-Time Variables

Passed to the install script to control how the binary is downloaded.

Variable	Description	Default
BYTEMIND_VERSION	Release tag to install (e.g. v0.3.0)	latest
BYTEMIND_INSTALL_DIR	Directory to install the binary into	~/bin
BYTEMIND_REPO	GitHub repository to download from	1024XEngineer/bytemind

Example:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1024XEngineer/bytemind/main/scripts/install.sh \
  | BYTEMIND_VERSION=v0.3.0 BYTEMIND_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin bash

Runtime Variables

Read by the bytemind binary at startup. All runtime variables override the corresponding config file field.

Variable	Overrides	Description
BYTEMIND_API_KEY	provider.api_key	Default API key if api_key_env is not set
BYTEMIND_APPROVAL_MODE	approval_mode	Override the approval mode (interactive or full_access; legacy away is blocked by default)
BYTEMIND_ALLOW_AWAY_FULL_ACCESS	n/a	Temporary migration gate: allow legacy approval_mode=away to map to full_access when set to true
BYTEMIND_SANDBOX_ENABLED	sandbox_enabled	Set to true to enable sandbox mode
BYTEMIND_WRITABLE_ROOTS	writable_roots	Colon-separated list of writable root paths
BYTEMIND_HOME	—	Override the .bytemind/ base directory path
BYTEMIND_MAX_ITERATIONS	max_iterations	Override the max tool-call iteration limit
BYTEMIND_LOG_LEVEL	—	Log verbosity: debug, info, warn, error

Example — fully configured via env (no config file):

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."
export BYTEMIND_APPROVAL_MODE="full_access"
export BYTEMIND_SANDBOX_ENABLED="true"
export BYTEMIND_WRITABLE_ROOTS="./src:./docs"

bytemind run -prompt "Regenerate all API docs"

Provider key variables

For provider-specific key variables, set api_key_env in provider config to the env var name of your choice. The BYTEMIND_API_KEY variable is only the fallback default.

See Also

• Config Reference — full config field list
• Configuration — config file format and examples
• Installation — BYTEMIND_INSTALL_DIR and BYTEMIND_VERSION