lecoffre

[!WARNING] This project is a work in progress. Expect breaking changes.

Per-project environment variable manager for the shell.

Store, load and unload environment variables by project and environment, directly in your current shell session.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 24 or later
• 1Password CLI (op) installed and signed in

Installation

npm install -g lecoffre

Storage

By default, lecoffre uses 1Password as its storage backend. Variables are stored as Secure Notes inside a dedicated lecoffre vault.

[!NOTE] When importing variables, field values are briefly visible in the process argument list (/proc/<pid>/cmdline). This is a limitation of the 1Password CLI, which does not support reading field values from stdin when spawned as a child process.

To get started, initialize the vault:

lecoffre init

Alternative: JSON file storage

[!CAUTION] This storage backend is not secure. Variables are stored in plain text on disk.

For development or environments without 1Password, set the LECOFFRE_STORAGE_PATH environment variable to use a local JSON file instead:

export LECOFFRE_STORAGE_PATH=/tmp/lecoffre.json

Quick start

# Initialize the storage backend
lecoffre init

# Import variables from a .env file
lecoffre import < .env

# Load them into your shell
eval "$(lecoffre load)"

# When you're done, unload them
eval "$(lecoffre unload)"

Commands

lecoffre init

Initialize the storage backend. For 1Password, this creates the lecoffre vault if it doesn't exist.

lecoffre list [project]

List all projects and their environments. When a project name is given, list only the environments for that project.

# List all projects
lecoffre list

# List environments for a specific project
lecoffre list my-app

lecoffre import

Import variables from stdin in .env format. By default, imported variables replace all existing variables for the target environment. Use --merge to add or overwrite without removing existing variables.

# Import and replace
lecoffre import < .env

# Import and merge with existing variables
lecoffre import --merge < .env

# Pipe from another command
cat .env.production | lecoffre import -e production

lecoffre load

Output shell commands that export the stored variables. Wrap with eval to apply them to the current shell.

eval "$(lecoffre load)"

# Load a specific environment
eval "$(lecoffre load -e production)"

lecoffre unload

Output shell commands that unset the stored variables. Wrap with eval to remove them from the current shell.

eval "$(lecoffre unload)"

Common options

| Option | Alias | Description | Default | | --------------------- | ----- | ---------------- | --------------------------------- | | --project <name> | -p | Project name | basename of the current directory | | --environment <env> | -e | Environment name | default |

These options are available on import, load and unload.

Shell support

Supported shells: bash, zsh and fish. The shell is detected automatically from the parent process.

License

MIT