🛡️ Env Sentinel (dotenv-schema)

Validate, secure, document, audit, and manage environment variables with confidence.

Env Sentinel is a complete environment variable toolkit for modern JavaScript and TypeScript applications. It ensures your application never starts with invalid configuration, warns you about leaked secrets, and generates beautiful documentation automatically.

✨ Features

• Type-Safe Validation: Define your schema once and get fully typed env objects anywhere.
• Fail Fast: Stops your application instantly if required variables are missing or invalid.
• Security Audits: Detects hardcoded secrets in source code, weak passwords, and public leaks.
• Automated Documentation: Generates .env.example and env.md directly from your schema.
• Framework Adapters: First-class support for Next.js, Vite, Node, and more.

📦 Installation

npm install dotenv-schema

🚀 Getting Started

Create your environment schema in src/env.ts:

import { defineEnv } from 'dotenv-schema';

export const env = defineEnv({
  PORT: {
    type: 'number',
    default: 3000,
    description: 'The server port to bind to',
  },
  DATABASE_URL: {
    type: 'url',
    required: true,
    description: 'PostgreSQL connection string',
    secret: true,
  },
  JWT_SECRET: {
    type: 'string',
    required: true,
    minLength: 32,
    secret: true,
  }
});

Now use the typed env object anywhere in your app:

import { env } from './env';

console.log(`Starting server on port ${env.PORT}`);

🛠 CLI Usage

Env Sentinel comes with a powerful CLI (env-sentinel) to audit your environment setup:

Validate Setup

Check if the current environment matches the schema:

npx env-sentinel validate

Audit Configuration and Security

Scan all .env files and source code for missing variables, unused variables, and security leaks:

npx env-sentinel audit

Generate Documentation

Generate .env.example and markdown documentation:

npx env-sentinel generate --format example
npx env-sentinel generate --format markdown

🧱 Framework Integrations

Env Sentinel provides framework-specific adapters out of the box:

Next.js

import { defineNextEnv } from 'dotenv-schema/next';

export const env = defineNextEnv({ ... });

Vite

import { defineViteEnv } from 'dotenv-schema/vite';

export const env = defineViteEnv({ ... });

🔄 CI/CD Integration

You can easily integrate Env Sentinel into your GitHub Actions pipeline to prevent misconfigured environments from merging into production:

steps:
  - run: npm install
  - run: npx env-sentinel check

If check (which runs audit) detects missing variables or CRITICAL security flaws (like a hardcoded Stripe key), it will fail the build with exit code 1.

License

MIT