Environment Variables

Backend (Go API)

Core

Variable	Default	Description
DATABASE_URL	postgres://memghost:memghost@db:5432/memghost?sslmode=disable	PostgreSQL connection string
PORT	8080	HTTP server listen port
JWT_SECRET_KEY	(required)	Secret key for JWT token signing. Generate with openssl rand -hex 32
DATA_DIR	/data	Directory for onboarding import data files

AI / Embeddings

Variable	Default	Description
AI_ENABLED	false	Master toggle for all AI features
AI_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER	ollama	Embedding provider (ollama, openrouter)
AI_EMBEDDING_BASE_URL	http://ollama:11434	Provider API URL for embeddings
AI_EMBEDDING_API_KEY	(none)	API key (for OpenRouter)
AI_EMBEDDING_MODEL	nomic-embed-text	Embedding model name
AI_EMBEDDING_DIMENSIONS	768	Vector dimensions (must match model)
AI_LLM_PROVIDER	ollama	LLM chat provider (ollama, openrouter, anthropic)
AI_LLM_BASE_URL	http://ollama:11434	Provider API URL for chat
AI_LLM_API_KEY	(none)	API key (for OpenRouter or Anthropic)
AI_LLM_MODEL	qwen3:8b	Chat model name

Text-to-Speech (TTS)

Variable	Default	Description
AI_TTS_ENABLED	false	Enable text-to-speech synthesis
AI_TTS_BASE_URL	http://kokoro:8880	Kokoro TTS API URL
AI_TTS_DEFAULT_VOICE	af_heart	Default voice ID (see Voice guide)
AI_TTS_DEFAULT_FORMAT	mp3	Audio format: mp3, wav, opus, flac
AI_TTS_DEFAULT_SPEED	1.0	Playback speed multiplier
TTS_AUDIO_DIR	/tts-audio	Directory for synthesized audio files

Speech-to-Text (STT)

Variable	Default	Description
AI_STT_ENABLED	false	Enable speech-to-text transcription
AI_STT_BASE_URL	http://whisper:8178	Whisper STT API URL
AI_STT_MODEL	whisper-large-v3-turbo	Whisper model name
AI_STT_LANGUAGE	en	Default transcription language

Sandbox

Variable	Default	Description
SANDBOX_ENABLED	false	Enable Deno-based plugin sandbox execution

Optional Integrations

Variable	Default	Description
OPENFGA_URL	(none)	OpenFGA authorization service URL
ZIPKIN_URL	(none)	Zipkin distributed tracing endpoint
OIDC_ENABLED	false	Enable OpenID Connect authentication
OIDC_ISSUER	(none)	OIDC issuer URL (e.g., https://accounts.google.com)
OIDC_CLIENT_ID	(none)	OIDC client ID
OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET	(none)	OIDC client secret
OIDC_REDIRECT_URI	(none)	OIDC callback URL
OIDC_DISPLAY_NAME	(none)	Display name on login page
OIDC_SCOPES	(none)	Comma-separated OIDC scopes

Frontend (Next.js)

Variable	Default	Description
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL	(empty)	API base URL for browser requests. Empty means same-origin (proxied by Caddy).
API_INTERNAL_URL	(empty)	Server-side URL for Next.js to reach the backend (used by API rewrites and the SSE streaming proxy)

In the production compose, Caddy handles all routing so these frontend variables are typically left empty (the defaults work correctly).

Database (PostgreSQL)

These are set on the db service in Docker Compose:

Variable	Default	Description
POSTGRES_USER	memghost	Database user
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	memghost	Database password (override with DB_PASSWORD in .env)
POSTGRES_DB	memghost	Database name

Docker Compose Environment

Variable	Default	Description
DB_PASSWORD	memghost	Database password (used in connection strings)
JWT_SECRET_KEY	change-me-in-production	JWT signing key
SITE_ADDRESS	localhost	Caddy site address (domain or IP)
PORT	80	Host HTTP port
HTTPS_PORT	443	Host HTTPS port

Using a .env File

Create a .env file next to your docker-compose.yml to override defaults:

.env

DB_PASSWORD=my-secure-password
JWT_SECRET_KEY=64-char-hex-string
SITE_ADDRESS=home.example.com
AI_ENABLED=true
AI_TTS_ENABLED=true
AI_STT_ENABLED=true

Docker Compose automatically reads .env from the same directory as the compose file.