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Reference

Environment variables.

Every PROGRESSPALS_* variable the CLI reads, plus the HuggingFace variables it honors. Variables not listed here are internal tuning and out of scope for normal use.

Operational variables

These are the variables you’ll set in normal day-to-day use.

PROGRESSPALS_INVITE_TOKEN

Invite token. Preferred channel for invite redemption — passing via env keeps the token out of /proc/<pid>/cmdline and shell history.

Read by: pals login, pals join, pals create

PROGRESSPALS_SWARM_SECRET

Per-swarm secret used to derive the AES-256 activation encryption key. The CLI auto-sets this from your config — you generally don't set it by hand.

Read by: pals create, pals join, pals serve

PROGRESSPALS_SERVE_HOSTDefault: 127.0.0.1

Interface for pals serve to bind. Set to 0.0.0.0 to expose on a LAN (requires --api-key).

Read by: pals serve

PROGRESSPALS_SERVE_PORTDefault: 8080

TCP port for pals serve.

Read by: pals serve

PROGRESSPALS_SERVE_API_KEY

Bearer token clients must present as Authorization: Bearer <key>. Required when binding a non-loopback host.

Read by: pals serve

PROGRESSPALS_CACHE

Override directory for ProgressPals-specific caches (model layer slices, etc.).

Read by: pals create, pals join

PROGRESSPALS_LOGGINGDefault: (enabled)

Boolean toggle for CLI/server logging. Set to 'False' or '0' to silence all log output. Anything else (or unset) enables logging at the default verbosity.

Read by: all commands

PROGRESSPALS_MAX_RETRIES

Maximum number of times the client retries a failed RPC before raising. Unset = retry forever.

Read by: client / inference path

Treat PROGRESSPALS_INVITE_TOKEN, PROGRESSPALS_SWARM_SECRET, and PROGRESSPALS_SERVE_API_KEY as secrets. Don’t commit them to git, don’t paste them in chat. Prefer setting them via export in your shell (not on the command line) so they don’t end up in ~/.bash_history or /proc/<pid>/cmdline.

Operator account credentials

Only operators need these — joiners can run pals login and pals join without any account credentials.

PROGRESSPALS_SUPABASE_URL

Base URL of the ProgressPals backend.

Read by: all operator-side commands

PROGRESSPALS_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY

Anon publishable key for the backend.

Read by: all operator-side commands

PROGRESSPALS_SUPABASE_ACCESS_TOKEN

Operator's session access token. Authenticates the CLI to your account.

Read by: all operator-side commands

PROGRESSPALS_SUPABASE_REFRESH_TOKEN

Operator's session refresh token. Used to refresh the access token when it expires.

Read by: all operator-side commands

HuggingFace variables

The CLI honors HuggingFace’s standard cache variables in the same precedence HuggingFace itself uses.

HF_HUB_CACHEDefault: $HF_HOME/hub

Directory where HuggingFace stores downloaded model files.

Read by: pals list, pals create, pals join

HF_HOMEDefault: ~/.cache/huggingface

Parent directory for the HuggingFace cache.

Read by: pals list, pals create, pals join

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