Getting started

Configuration

Swifbit is configured through environment variables. Every value has a working default for local development; production requires you to set the secrets.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
`DATABASE_URL`	Yes	PostgreSQL 16 connection string (with pgvector available).
`SWIFBIT_SECRET`	Yes	Session signing secret. Change in production.
`SWIFBIT_ENCRYPTION_KEY`	Yes	Stable key for encrypting AI and connector credentials. Do not rotate without re-entering stored credentials.
`PORT`	No	HTTP port for the kernel. Defaults to 4000.
`SWIFBIT_DATA_DIR`	No	Writable directory for connector package files and generated assets.

SWIFBIT_SECRET and SWIFBIT_ENCRYPTION_KEY must be set to strong, unique values in production. Generate them independently and store them in your secret manager — never commit them.

Example .env

.env

DATABASE_URL=postgres://swifbit:swifbit@localhost:5433/swifbit
SWIFBIT_SECRET=replace-with-a-long-random-value
SWIFBIT_ENCRYPTION_KEY=replace-with-a-different-long-random-value
PORT=4000
# SWIFBIT_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/swifbit

AI provider

The AI provider is configured in-app under Settings → Intelligence, not via environment variables. Swifbit supports local Ollama, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and Vertex AI. Provider API keys entered here are stored encrypted at rest.

Migrations

Schema migrations run automatically on startup under a database advisory lock, so it is safe to start multiple instances against the same database. No manual migration step is required.