All Cognisafe services are configured exclusively via environment variables. No config files need to be edited.
api (FastAPI backend)
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|
POSTGRES_URL | Yes | asyncpg connection string. Format: postgresql+asyncpg://user:password@host:5432/dbname |
REDIS_URL | Yes | Redis connection string. Format: redis://host:6379 |
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY | Yes | Stripe secret API key (sk_live_... or sk_test_...) |
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET | Yes | Stripe webhook signing secret (whsec_...). Required for billing webhooks to be accepted. |
STRIPE_PRICE_PRO | Yes | Stripe Price ID for the Pro tier ($49/mo). Format: price_... |
STRIPE_PRICE_TEAM | Yes | Stripe Price ID for the Team tier ($199/mo). Format: price_... |
INTERNAL_API_SECRET | Yes | A long random secret shared between the api and web services. Used to authenticate internal server-to-server calls. Generate with openssl rand -hex 32. |
proxy (Go reverse proxy)
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|
UPSTREAM_URL | Yes | The LLM provider to forward requests to. Default: https://api.openai.com. Change for Mistral (https://api.mistral.ai), Azure, or Ollama. |
API_BACKEND_URL | Yes | URL of the api service. The proxy POSTs logs here. Example: http://api:8000 (Docker) or https://api.cognisafe.uk (Railway). |
PROXY_API_KEY | Yes | The API key that clients must send to authenticate with the proxy. Must match a valid Cognisafe project API key. |
web (Next.js dashboard)
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|
NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY | Yes | Clerk publishable key for client-side auth (pk_live_...). Embedded in the browser bundle. |
CLERK_SECRET_KEY | Yes | Clerk secret key for server-side auth (sk_live_...). Never exposed to the browser. |
INTERNAL_API_SECRET | Yes | Same value as the api service. Used by Next.js server-side routes to authenticate calls to the FastAPI backend. |
API_URL | Yes | Server-side URL of the api service. Used by Next.js server components and API routes. Example: http://api:8000 (Docker) or https://api.cognisafe.uk (Railway). |
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL | Yes | Client-side URL of the api service. Embedded in the browser bundle — must be publicly accessible. Example: https://api.cognisafe.uk. |
safety_worker (PyRIT scoring worker)
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|
POSTGRES_URL | Yes | Same connection string as the api service. The worker writes scored results directly to PostgreSQL. |
REDIS_URL | Yes | Same connection string as the api service. The worker reads jobs from the safety_score_jobs queue. |
OPENAI_API_KEY | No | OpenAI API key used by PyRIT to run LLM-based scorers. If not set, all requests fall back to score_label: "unscored". |
SCORER_MODEL | No | The OpenAI model used by PyRIT for scoring. Default: gpt-4o-mini. Override to use a different model, e.g., gpt-4o. |
Docker Compose shared variables
When using infra/docker-compose.yml, these variables are set in .env at the repo root and shared across services via env_file:
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|
POSTGRES_URL | postgresql+asyncpg://postgres:postgres@postgres:5432/cognisafe | Overridden per service if needed |
REDIS_URL | redis://redis:6379 | — |
In Docker Compose, service hostnames resolve to container names (e.g., postgres, redis, api). In Railway or Kubernetes, use the actual service URLs provided by your infrastructure.
Generating secrets
# Generate INTERNAL_API_SECRET
openssl rand -hex 32
# Generate a PROXY_API_KEY (if not using the dashboard)
python -c "import secrets; print('csk_' + secrets.token_hex(24))"
