Configuration

Kalki reads environment variables from .env.local. The core block and the Gemini key are required. Each media provider is optional, and its stage is skipped or falls back when the key is missing.

Core

Variable	Required	What it does
DATABASE_URL	yes	PostgreSQL connection string. The database needs the vector extension, which the Docker image has.
AUTH_SECRET	yes	Signs session tokens. Generate with openssl rand -base64 32.
AUTH_URL	in production	The public URL of the app.
FFMPEG_PATH	no	Path to ffmpeg. Defaults to ffmpeg on PATH.

Language model

Variable	Required	What it does
GOOGLE_GENERATIVE_AI_API_KEY	yes	Gemini 2.5 Pro for research, script and metadata, and text-embedding-004 for similarity search.

Media providers

Variable	Stage	Provider
STABILITY_API_KEY	Artist	Stability AI image generation
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY	Producer	ElevenLabs text to speech
SEEDANCE_API_KEY	Animator	Seedance 2.0, preferred when set
KLING_API_KEY	Animator	Kling, used when Seedance is missing or fails

Kalki only calls these providers with keys you supply, under your own account and its terms.

WhatsApp control (optional)

Variable	What it does
KALKI_WEBHOOK_SECRET	Shared secret your gateway sends in the x-kalki-secret header.
WHATSAPP_OWNER_NUMBER	The only number allowed to send commands, digits only.

Both must be set or /api/whatsapp answers 503. See API.

Seeding and Docker

Variable	What it does
SEED_OWNER_EMAIL	Email for the owner account the seed creates.
SEED_OWNER_PASSWORD	Its password, 12 characters or more.
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	Password for the Docker Compose database. Required.

Site-only mode

Variable	What it does
KALKI_SITE_ONLY	Set to 1 to serve only the landing page and docs. Every app route redirects home. The public site runs this way.