Nothing solves env loading and validation better than Varlock. Nub v0.7 adds first-party support. If your repo contains an .env.schema file, Nub uses Varlock to load/validate your environment when running a file or script 👇
Theo Ephraim 🧙‍♂️
@theozero
Sep 4
🛑 .env.example is an anti-pattern - copy-paste means it gets out of sync - mix of real values and placeholders - source of truth is scattered (real env file, validation code, usage sites, readme) - no way to understand which items are sensitive .env.schema is the answer!

Sep 6, 2026 · 8:17 AM UTC

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Replying to @colinhacks
If you want granular control over who gets to decrypt that .env, eg. your agent must ask permission, but your terminal gets auto-approved. Then I added that to Automic Vault a couple weeks ago. Should just work with `nub`.
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nice this rocks!
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Replying to @colinhacks
What about fnox? 🥲
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these are complementary, you can use them together 👍
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Replying to @colinhacks
Hell yeah
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Replying to @colinhacks
But is it worth a third party dependency ... ?
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Replying to @colinhacks
is process.env typed after this? that's the part i'd actually switch for
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Replying to @colinhacks
You are really tempting me to switch to nub
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Replying to @colinhacks @varlockdev
This weekend I migrated to @varlockdev a monorepo that use vite-plus, docker , @workflowsdk , better-auth , drizzle , GitHub actions. All went well. Need to try nub. github.com/xmlking/chakra

GitHub - xmlking/chakra: Starter Kit for AI Native Applications - Vite Plus (Vite+) TanStack Start...

Starter Kit for AI Native Applications - Vite Plus (Vite+) TanStack Start monorepo with Paraglide.js (i18n), drizzle-orm, better-auth, Feature-Sliced Design (FSD) - xmlking/chakra

github.com
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Replying to @colinhacks
The normal command doing the validation is the win for me. A check that depends on everybody remembering a special prefix eventually becomes a README suggestion.
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Replying to @colinhacks
what about @stashbase
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Replying to @colinhacks
Definitely going to look at this. Already before AI-agents, .env files were an anti-pattern.
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