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Environment variables allow you to securely store API keys and other sensitive configuration values. These variables are used in development mode, when running your scripts, and for LLM-based tests, such as LLM-as-a-judge evaluations.

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Workspace-level environment variables

Workspace-level environment variables are shared across all projects in your workspace. To set them, navigate to Workspace settings → Environment variables.

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Pre-defined variables

Openlayer provides pre-defined fields for commonly used API keys:
  • OPENAI_API_KEY
  • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
  • AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY
  • AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT
  • GOOGLE_API_KEY
and others, which are used by popular LLM providers.

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Custom variables

You can also add arbitrary key-value pairs for any other environment variables your system requires.

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Custom CA certificates

If your organization uses custom Certificate Authority (CA) certificates for secure connections, you can add them as environment variables using the CUSTOM_CA_CERT_* pattern. To add a custom CA certificate:
  1. Navigate to Workspace settings → Environment variables (or Project settings → Environment variables for project-specific certificates)
  2. Add a new custom variable with a key starting with CUSTOM_CA_CERT_, followed by a descriptive suffix (e.g., CUSTOM_CA_CERT_INTERNAL or CUSTOM_CA_CERT_CORPORATE)
  3. Paste your CA certificate content as the value (in PEM format)
These custom CA certificates will be automatically applied to:
  • Development mode: Your custom certificates will be used when running scripts and code in the development mode commit environment
  • LLM evaluators: The certificates will be trusted when running LLM-based tests and evaluations, ensuring secure connections to your LLM providers
You can add multiple custom CA certificates by creating multiple environment variables with different suffixes (e.g., CUSTOM_CA_CERT_1, CUSTOM_CA_CERT_2, etc.). All certificates matching the CUSTOM_CA_CERT_* pattern will be trusted.

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Project-level environment variables

Project-level environment variables work the same way as workspace-level ones, but are specific to a single project. They are only used during development mode runs and LLM-based tests within that project. To set them, navigate to Project settings → Select your project → Environment variables.
If an environment variable is already set at the workspace level, you will see a tag indicating that it is inherited on the project-level page. You can override inherited variables by setting a new value at the project level.