Environment Variables

Supported environment variables

Environment Variables

Reference for all environment variables used by Simili Bot.

Required

At minimum, you need Qdrant credentials and at least one AI provider key.

QDRANT_URL

Vector database URL.

export QDRANT_URL="https://your-cluster.qdrant.io:6333"

QDRANT_API_KEY

Vector database API key.

export QDRANT_API_KEY="your-api-key"

GEMINI_API_KEY

Google Gemini API key (for embeddings and/or LLM).

export GEMINI_API_KEY="your-gemini-api-key"

OPENAI_API_KEY

OpenAI API key (alternative to Gemini, or used alongside it).

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."

If both GEMINI_API_KEY and OPENAI_API_KEY are set, Gemini takes priority.

Optional

GITHUB_TOKEN

GitHub personal access token for API calls. Automatically provided in GitHub Actions.

export GITHUB_TOKEN="ghp_xxxxx"

Required scopes: repo, write:checks

TRANSFER_TOKEN

Elevated GitHub token for cross-repository transfers.

export TRANSFER_TOKEN="ghp_xxxxx"

LLM_MODEL

Override the LLM model at runtime without changing simili.yaml.

export LLM_MODEL="gemini-2.5-flash"

GITHUB_REPOSITORY

Repository in owner/repo format. Used by simili auto-close when --repo is not specified.

export GITHUB_REPOSITORY="my-org/my-repo"

This is set automatically in GitHub Actions environments.

Provider precedence

Scenario	Embedding Provider	LLM Provider
Only GEMINI_API_KEY set	Gemini	Gemini
Only OPENAI_API_KEY set	OpenAI	OpenAI
Both keys set	Gemini (wins)	Gemini (wins)
Config embedding.provider set	As configured	As configured

Configuration variable expansion

Use variables in simili.yaml with ${VAR_NAME} syntax:

qdrant:
  url: "${QDRANT_URL}"
  api_key: "${QDRANT_API_KEY}"

embedding:
  provider: "gemini"
  api_key: "${GEMINI_API_KEY}"

llm:
  provider: "openai"
  api_key: "${OPENAI_API_KEY}"

Simili Bot expands ${VARIABLE_NAME} from the environment at runtime.

GitHub Actions

Set secrets in your repository and reference them in workflows:

env:
  GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  QDRANT_URL: ${{ secrets.QDRANT_URL }}
  QDRANT_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.QDRANT_API_KEY }}
  GEMINI_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.GEMINI_API_KEY }}
  # Optional:
  OPENAI_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.OPENAI_API_KEY }}
  TRANSFER_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TRANSFER_TOKEN }}

Docker

Pass variables with -e:

docker run -e QDRANT_URL="..." \
           -e QDRANT_API_KEY="..." \
           -e GEMINI_API_KEY="..." \
           similigh/simili-bot:latest