Environment variables

The gateway reads environment variables at startup and at request time. None of them accept runtime overrides via HTTP; restart required to change.

Required for production

Name	Source	Notes
SMART_GATEWAY_API_KEY	.env.production	The bearer token accepted from clients. Length > 10 enforced. Note: the value is not cryptographically verified against an allowlist in v1.0.0.
OPENROUTER_API_KEY	.env.production	OpenRouter API key. Server-side only. Never sent to clients.
OPENROUTER_BASE_URL	.env.production	Defaults to https://openrouter.ai/api/v1.

Optional / defaults

Name	Default	Notes
MODEL_GATEWAY_BACKEND	openrouter	openrouter or litellm. v1.0.0 uses openrouter exclusively.
LITELLM_BASE_URL	http://litellm:4000/v1	Only used if MODEL_GATEWAY_BACKEND=litellm.
LITELLM_MASTER_KEY	unset	Only used if MODEL_GATEWAY_BACKEND=litellm.
POSTGRES_USER	sgwproduction	PostgreSQL user (production compose).
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	required	PostgreSQL password.
POSTGRES_DB	sgwproduction	PostgreSQL database.
DATABASE_URL	derived	postgresql://$POSTGRES_USER:$POSTGRES_PASSWORD@db:5432/$POSTGRES_DB.
LOG_LEVEL	INFO	INFO, WARNING, ERROR.
ALLOW_FREE_MODEL_FOR_PRIVATE_REPOS	false	Operator-standing policy. Flipping requires a privacy review.
ROUTING_POLICY_PATH	frozen-v3/config/routing-policy.yaml	Override path inside the container.
MODELS_CONFIG_PATH	frozen-v3/config/models.yaml	Override path inside the container.
LITELLM_IMAGE	ghcr.io/berriai/litellm:main-latest	DEV ONLY. Must be pinned before any production use.
RELEASE_SHA	set by deploy	Commit SHA of the deployed build.
RELEASE_TAG	set by deploy	Tag name. Empty for ad-hoc builds.

What is never read from environment

• The model field in a request — always parsed from JSON body.
• The OpenRouter completion ID — generated by OpenRouter.
• Routing policy thresholds — they live in routing-policy.yaml, not in env vars.

Filesystem layout

/srv/apps/smart-supervisor-production/
├── .env.production         # 0600 root:root
├── docker-compose.production.yml
├── Dockerfile
└── frozen-v3/
    └── config/
        ├── routing-policy.yaml
        └── models.yaml

The container mounts frozen-v3/config/ read-only into /app/config/ (see docker-compose.production.yml::volumes).

How to read the running configuration

The structured log line at startup includes the active freeze ID:

docker logs smart-supervisor-production-gateway-1 | grep freeze

A 403 from the privacy gate is a sign that the active policy has free_model_fail_closed: true (the v1.0.0 default). A 200 on a sensitive request to smart-router-free is a sign that the registry's allow_sensitive flag was changed for Nemotron — that should never happen, and if it does, treat it as a security incident.

See also

• Reference → Configuration.
• env.production.template — the canonical template.
• docs-internal/operations/secret-rotation.md — how to change credentials safely.