Environment Variables

All variables are set in a single .env file at the repo root, read by docker-compose.yml and passed through to the backend service.

Variable	Required	Used for
`DB_USER`	Yes	Postgres username — used by both the `postgres` container (to create the role) and the backend's connection pool
`DB_PASSWORD`	Yes	Postgres password
`DB_NAME`	Yes	Postgres database name
`JWT_SECRET`	Yes	Signs/verifies the dashboard's session JWT. Use a long, random value — anyone with this secret can mint valid session tokens
`PORT`	Yes	Host port the `nginx` service publishes; this is the port you access FlagPulse on (e.g. `http://localhost:$PORT`)

Notes

There's no .env value for the backend's internal port — it's hardcoded to 3000 in server.js and in nginx.conf's proxy_pass.
Postgres and Redis hostnames are hardcoded to the Compose service names (postgres, redis) rather than being configurable — if you're not using Docker Compose, you'll need to edit backend/config/postgres.js and backend/config/redis.js directly.
.env is excluded from Docker build contexts via .dockerignore — never bake secrets into an image layer.

bash

DB_USER=flagpulse
DB_PASSWORD=change-me
DB_NAME=flagpulse

JWT_SECRET=replace-with-a-long-random-string

PORT=8080