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Once you have a license key, there are two ways to supply it to Sentinel: directly in settings.js, or via an environment variable.

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Method 1: settings.js

Add a license field inside the sentinel block in your settings.js: 
module.exports = {
    sentinel: {
        license: "eyJ...",
    },
};
This is the simplest approach for local and self-hosted deployments where settings.js is writable.

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Method 2: Environment variable

Set the NRG_SENTINEL_LICENSE environment variable before starting Node-RED: 
NRG_SENTINEL_LICENSE=eyJ...
Use this method in containerised deployments where settings.js is mounted read-only (for example, -v $(pwd)/settings.js:/etc/nodered/settings.js:ro in Docker). The environment variable takes effect at startup without requiring any changes to the mounted config file.

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Method 3: .sentinel-license file

Sentinel reads a .sentinel-license file from the Node-RED userDir at startup. Place your license key as plain text in this file as an alternative to the environment variable when you need to inject a key into a container without modifying settings.js or the container’s environment.

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