Environment Variables¶

Demonator can export environment variables into every shell it spawns — commands, setup/teardown hooks, wait_for runs, and interact runs all see them.

Global env¶

Set env at the top level. Every step inherits these values:

env:
  AWS_PROFILE: demo
  LOG_LEVEL: debug
  API_BASE_URL: http://localhost:8080

steps:
  - text: "aws s3 ls"          # AWS_PROFILE=demo
  - text: "curl $API_BASE_URL/health"

Per-step env¶

Add env: to a single command step to override or extend the global map. The merge is per-key: keys you define on the step win; keys you do not redefine are still inherited from global:

env:
  LOG_LEVEL: debug

steps:
  - text: "./run --verbose"          # LOG_LEVEL=debug
  - text: "./run --quiet"
    env:
      LOG_LEVEL: error               # this step only
  - text: "./run --verbose again"    # back to LOG_LEVEL=debug

Values are not interpolated¶

Demonator passes env values to the spawned shell verbatim. Writing TOKEN: ${HOST_TOKEN} in YAML does not read HOST_TOKEN from the process running demonator — it sets TOKEN to the literal string ${HOST_TOKEN}.

To pull a value from the host environment, reference it in the command itself (the shell expands it):

steps:
  - text: "echo $HOME/$USER"   # expanded by sh, not by demonator

Anything you export from the shell that runs demonator is also inherited by the spawned commands by default — env: only adds to (or overrides) that inherited environment.

Use cases¶

Pinning a profile or region¶

env:
  AWS_PROFILE: demo
  AWS_REGION: us-east-1

Switching log verbosity for one step¶

env:
  LOG_LEVEL: info

steps:
  - text: "./app start"
  - text: "./app diagnose"
    env:
      LOG_LEVEL: trace

Disabling colors / pagers for clean recorded output¶

env:
  NO_COLOR: "1"
  PAGER: cat
  GIT_PAGER: cat