Environment Files

Your application's runtime configuration — database credentials, API keys, cache and queue settings — lives in a per-environment .env file stored in S3, not committed to your repository. YOLO pulls it down at build time and bakes it into the container image.

Each environment has its own file, named .env.<environment>:

.env.production
.env.staging

yolo init adds these to your .gitignore so they're never committed.

Initial setup

After yolo init you'll have a starter .env.production. Fill it in with your real production configuration (copy from an existing .env if you have one), then push it to S3.

Push

Upload your local environment file to the S3 artefacts bucket:

yolo env:push production

YOLO downloads the current remote version first and shows a diff of exactly which keys are being added, changed, or removed — then asks you to confirm before uploading. If there's no remote file yet, it uploads straight away.

This is the safe way to change production config: edit .env.production locally, review the diff, confirm.

Pull

Download the current remote environment file:

yolo env:pull production

This writes .env.production to your project root. Use it to review what's currently deployed, or to pick up changes a teammate pushed before you edit.

WARNING

env:pull overwrites your local .env.production. Pull before you edit so you're working from the current remote version, not a stale one.

How it's used at deploy time

You don't reference the env file in your deploy command — it's automatic. During yolo build, YOLO retrieves .env.<environment> from S3, stamps in the build's APP_VERSION (and ASSET_URL, mirrored into VITE_ASSET_URL so Vite sees the same prefix, when a CDN is configured), and bakes it into the image as /app/.env. Your build hooks (e.g. npm run build) run against that environment, and the running container uses it directly.

The bucket itself (yolo-<env>-artefacts by default) is provisioned by yolo sync. You can override its name with artefacts-bucket — see the manifest reference.