Environment Variables

Environment variables override corresponding settings from settings.json and are useful for container and CI/CD deployments.

Runtime Variables

Variable	Default	Description
`ROUTERLY_HOME`	`~/.routerly`	Root directory for the service config and data (set automatically by the installer in the daemon unit). CLI auth tokens are always stored in `~/.routerly/cli/` regardless of this value.
`ROUTERLY_PORT`	`3000` (or from `settings.json`)	TCP port the service listens on. Overrides `port` in settings
`ROUTERLY_HOST`	`0.0.0.0` (or from `settings.json`)	Bind address. Overrides `host` in settings
`ROUTERLY_PUBLIC_URL`	`http://localhost:3000`	Externally reachable URL. Overrides `publicUrl` in settings
`ROUTERLY_LOG_LEVEL`	`info`	Log verbosity. Overrides `logLevel` in settings. Values: `error`, `warn`, `info`, `debug`
`NODE_ENV`	`development`	Set to `production` for production deployments (affects error verbosity and logging format)

These variables are only used during the install/update process (install.sh, install.ps1, install.mjs) and have no effect at runtime.

Variable	Values	Description
`ROUTERLY_SCOPE`	`user` (default), `system`	Install scope. `user` keeps all service config in `~/.routerly/`; `system` moves service config and data to the platform system directory (`/var/lib/routerly/` on Linux, `/Library/Application Support/Routerly/` on macOS, `C:\ProgramData\Routerly\` on Windows) and requires root/sudo. CLI auth tokens remain per-user in both cases.
`ROUTERLY_DAEMON`	`true`, `false`	Register as a background service after installation. Defaults to `true`
`ROUTERLY_INSTALL_DIR`	(path)	Override the installation directory

In Docker deployments, set ROUTERLY_HOME to the path of your mounted volume:

environment:
  - ROUTERLY_HOME=/data
  - NODE_ENV=production
  - ROUTERLY_PORT=3000

Environment variables always take precedence over values in settings.json. The lookup order is: