Environment variables

Every Anton setting can be set as an environment variable with the ANTON_ prefix. Most users never touch these directly — the anton setup and anton setup-search flows write them to the right .env file for you — but they are all available for scripting and overrides.

The .env loading chain

Anton reads configuration from three locations:

1. .env in the current directory
2. .anton/.env in the workspace (project-local config)
3. ~/.anton/.env (global config — LLM keys, search keys)

Variables set in your actual shell environment always take precedence over values from any file. Setup flows write LLM and search provider keys to the global file so they carry across workspaces, and workspace-specific settings to the local one.

Providers and models

Variable	Default	What it does
ANTON_PLANNING_PROVIDER	anthropic	Provider for the planning model (anthropic, openai, openai-compatible)
ANTON_PLANNING_MODEL	claude-sonnet-4-6	Model used for planning and conversation
ANTON_CODING_PROVIDER	anthropic	Provider for the coding model
ANTON_CODING_MODEL	claude-haiku-4-5-20251001	Model used for code generation in the scratchpad
ANTON_MAX_TOKENS	8192	Max output tokens per LLM call
ANTON_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	unset	Anthropic API key
ANTON_OPENAI_API_KEY	unset	OpenAI (or OpenAI-compatible endpoint) API key
ANTON_OPENAI_BASE_URL	unset	Base URL for an OpenAI-compatible endpoint
ANTON_OPENAI_API_VERSION	unset	Azure OpenAI api-version query parameter
ANTON_MINDS_ENABLED	true	Allow using a Minds server as LLM provider
ANTON_MINDS_API_KEY	unset	Minds API key
ANTON_MINDS_URL	Minds cloud URL	Minds server URL
ANTON_MINDS_MIND_NAME	unset	Mind name to use on the Minds server
ANTON_MINDS_SSL_VERIFY	true	Verify SSL certificates when talking to the Minds server

Web tools

Variable	Default	What it does
ANTON_WEB_SEARCH_ENABLED	true	Enable the web_search tool — see Web search
ANTON_WEB_FETCH_ENABLED	true	Enable the web_fetch tool — see Web fetch
ANTON_EXTERNAL_SEARCH_PROVIDER	unset	External search provider for generic endpoints: exa or brave
ANTON_EXA_API_KEY	unset	Exa.ai API key
ANTON_BRAVE_API_KEY	unset	Brave Search API key

The search provider variables are normally written by anton setup-search — see Search providers.

Memory

Variable	Default	What it does
ANTON_MEMORY_ENABLED	true	Master switch for the memory system
ANTON_MEMORY_MODE	autopilot	How lessons are saved: autopilot, copilot, or off — see Memory overview
ANTON_EPISODIC_MEMORY	true	Keep an episode archive of past sessions — see Episodes and recall

Behavior

Variable	Default	What it does
ANTON_THEME	auto	Terminal color theme
ANTON_DISABLE_AUTOUPDATES	false	Skip automatic update checks — see Updating
ANTON_ANALYTICS_ENABLED	true	Anonymous usage events — see Analytics
ANTON_LANGFUSE_HEADERS	unset	Set to 1 to attach Langfuse trace headers on any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — see Trace headers
ANTON_PROACTIVE_DASHBOARDS	false	When true, Anton builds HTML dashboards proactively; when false, CLI output only
ANTON_BACKEND	local	Scratchpad backend: local or remote (remote requires Minds URL and API key)
ANTON_PUBLISH_URL	https://4nton.ai	Publish service used when sharing artifacts
ANTON_TERMS_CONSENT	false	Records that you accepted the terms screen (set by the first-run flow)
ANTON_FIRST_RUN_DONE	false	Records that first-run onboarding completed (set by the setup flow)

A few additional internal tuning variables exist (tool-round limits, cell timeouts); they are intentionally undocumented here as they are not meant for everyday configuration.