Configuration

Configuration is organized by setting environment variables, read from .env (copy .env.example to start). This page documents every variable; defaults shown are from backend/app/config.py.

Database & cache

Variable	Default	Description
POSTGRES_USER	phoenix	Database user
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	—	Database password (required)
POSTGRES_DB	phoenix	Database name
DATABASE_URL	derived from the above	Full SQLAlchemy connection string; set directly to override
REDIS_URL	redis://localhost:6379/0	Celery broker/result backend

LLM providers

Variable	Default	Description
LLM_PROVIDERS	anthropic	Comma-separated, ordered list — first is primary, rest are fallbacks. Valid values: anthropic, ollama. Example: ollama,anthropic. The legacy singular LLM_PROVIDER is also accepted as an alias.
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	—	Required if anthropic is in the provider list
ANTHROPIC_MODEL	claude-haiku-4-5
OLLAMA_BASE_URL	http://localhost:11434	Set to a remote host to use Ollama running elsewhere, e.g. http://192.168.1.10:11434
OLLAMA_MODEL	qwen3:8b
OLLAMA_EMBEDDING_MODEL	nomic-embed-text	Used for semantic clustering regardless of which provider handles text generation — 768-dim; changing it requires a schema migration (see Clustering)
OLLAMA_TIMEOUT	300 (seconds)	Increase for remote or slow Ollama hosts
LLM_BATCH_MAX_WAIT_MINUTES	10	How long to wait for an Anthropic Batch API job before cancelling and falling back to synchronous processing

See LLM Providers for how the fallback chain and batch processing work.

Reddit

Variable	Default	Description
REDDIT_CLIENT_ID / REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET	—	From a Reddit “personal use script” app. Can also be set per-source instead (or in addition) — see Sources.
REDDIT_USER_AGENT	ShoebillFeed/1.0
REDDIT_USERNAME / REDDIT_PASSWORD	—	Only needed for the OAuth “password” grant (script-type apps); without them Shoebill falls back to app-only client_credentials auth

Authentication

Variable	Default	Description
JWT_SECRET	change-me-in-production	Change this. Generate with openssl rand -hex 32
JWT_EXPIRE_HOURS	24	Session length
ADMIN_USERNAME	—	Default admin account, created (or password-reset) on startup
ADMIN_PASSWORD	—

Push notifications (Web Push / VAPID)

Variable	Default	Description
VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY / VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY	—	Generate with: python -c "from pywebpush import Vapid; v=Vapid(); v.generate_keys(); print('VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY='+v.private_key); print('VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY='+v.public_key)"
VAPID_SUBJECT	mailto:admin@localhost

Notes

• Restart required for LLM config changes. LLM_PROVIDERS and related settings are read once and cached for the process lifetime — the settings UI shows the current LLM configuration but changing it always requires editing .env and restarting, never just an API call.

• The backend runs from a built Docker image. docker compose run --rm backend alembic ... does not pick up local file changes — see Development for the correct migration workflow.