Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/HugoX2003/nisira-assistant/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
NISIRA Assistant is configured entirely through environment variables — there are no hard-coded secrets in the codebase. The backend reads a .env file at startup via python-dotenv, while the production deployment (Docker / DigitalOcean App Platform) injects variables directly into the runtime environment. The sections below document every supported variable, its default value, and when it is required.
Django Core
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
SECRET_KEY / DJANGO_SECRET_KEY | Yes (prod) | Insecure fallback | Django’s cryptographic signing key. Generate a long random string for every production deployment and keep it secret. |
DEBUG | No | True | Set to False in production. When True, Django returns verbose error pages and disables several security hardening checks. |
ENVIRONMENT | No | — | Informational tag identifying the runtime environment. Typical values: local (development) and production. Not read by Django core settings directly, but useful for distinguishing runtime contexts in logs and deployment configs. |
ALLOWED_HOSTS | No | Auto-detected | Comma-separated list of hostnames Django will serve (e.g. your-domain.com,www.your-domain.com,1.2.3.4). If omitted, the backend auto-detects the environment: Heroku (DYNO), Railway (RAILWAY_ENVIRONMENT_NAME), or falls back to localhost,127.0.0.1. |
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE | No | core.settings | Fully qualified settings module. Set to core.production_settings when deploying to DigitalOcean App Platform or any environment that uses a dedicated production settings file. |
Never commit SECRET_KEY to source control. In production, treat it the same
as a database password: rotate it if it is ever exposed.
Database
Django resolves the active database using a three-tier strategy, evaluated in order:
DATABASE_URL (PostgreSQL URI) — used by Railway, Heroku, and DigitalOcean managed databases.- MySQL individual variables — used when
DB_ENGINE=mysql is set, typically for local development with a MySQL server.
- SQLite fallback — automatic when neither of the above is present; suitable only for quick local testing.
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
DATABASE_URL | Prod | — | Full PostgreSQL connection URI, e.g. postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/dbname. When present, all individual DB_* variables are ignored. |
DB_ENGINE | No | — | Set to mysql to activate the MySQL path. Omit when using DATABASE_URL. |
DB_NAME | No | rag_asistente | MySQL database name. |
DB_USER | No | root | MySQL user. |
DB_PASSWORD | No | (empty) | MySQL password. |
DB_HOST | No | localhost | MySQL host. |
DB_PORT | No | 3306 | MySQL port. |
The DATABASE_URL format accepted by dj-database-url supports SSL options:
append ?sslmode=require when connecting to a remote managed database over an
untrusted network.
LLM Providers
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
LLM_PROVIDER | No | openrouter | Active generation backend. Accepted values: openrouter, google, groq. |
GOOGLE_API_KEY | Conditional | — | Required when LLM_PROVIDER=google. Also used by the Gemini embedding model regardless of the active LLM provider. |
LLM_MODEL_GEMINI | No | gemini-2.0-flash-exp | Gemini model name for both chat and embeddings when using the Google provider. |
OPENROUTER_API_KEY | Conditional | — | Required when LLM_PROVIDER=openrouter. |
LLM_MODEL_OPENROUTER | No | google/gemma-2-9b-it | OpenRouter model slug. Any model listed on openrouter.ai/models is valid. |
OPENROUTER_BASE_URL | No | https://openrouter.ai/api/v1 | OpenRouter API base URL. Override only if routing through a proxy. |
GROQ_API_KEY | Conditional | — | Required when LLM_PROVIDER=groq. |
LLM_MODEL_GROQ | No | llama-3.3-70b-versatile | Groq model identifier. |
GROQ_BASE_URL | No | https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 | Groq API base URL. |
LLM_MAX_TOKENS | No | 8192 | Maximum tokens the model may generate per request. Applies to the Gemini provider; individual RAG responses are further capped by max_response_tokens (1500) in the generation config. |
Embeddings
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
EMBEDDING_MODEL | No | sentence-transformers/all-mpnet-base-v2 | HuggingFace model ID used for local embedding inference. This 768-dimensional model is used as the fallback when Google embeddings are unavailable. |
EMBEDDING_DEVICE | No | cpu | Inference device for the local embedding model. Set to cuda if a compatible GPU is available to accelerate document indexing. |
GEMINI_EMBEDDING_MODEL | No | models/text-embedding-004 | Google embedding model used in production when GOOGLE_API_KEY is set. |
VECTOR_STORE_BACKEND | No | postgres | Vector storage engine. postgres uses pgvector on the existing PostgreSQL database; chroma runs a local ChromaDB instance (recommended for development). |
Google Drive
Google Drive integration is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled. When enabled, the backend periodically syncs documents from a specified Drive folder into the RAG document store.
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
ENABLE_GOOGLE_DRIVE | No | false | Set to true to activate Drive sync. When false, all other GOOGLE_DRIVE_* variables are ignored at runtime. |
GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID | Conditional | — | Google Drive folder ID to sync. Find it in the folder’s URL: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/<FOLDER_ID>. |
GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_NAME | No | (empty) | Optional human-readable folder name used for display purposes. |
GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_JSON | Conditional | — | Service account credentials as a single-line JSON string. If provided and credentials.json does not exist on disk, the backend writes it automatically at startup. Mark as Encrypted in DigitalOcean. |
GOOGLE_TOKEN_JSON | No | — | OAuth2 user token as a single-line JSON string. Written to data/token.json automatically when provided. Used for OAuth-based (non-service-account) authentication flows. |
GOOGLE_DRIVE_SYNC_INTERVAL | No | 300 | Polling interval in seconds between Drive sync cycles. |
GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_JSON contains your service account private key. Always
mark this variable as Encrypted / Secret in your deployment platform’s
environment variable UI and never log its value.
Server / Gunicorn
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
PORT | No | 8000 | Port Gunicorn binds to. DigitalOcean App Platform injects this automatically; override only when running behind a custom reverse proxy. |
GUNICORN_WORKERS | No | 2 | Number of Gunicorn worker processes. A common formula is 2 * CPU_cores + 1; the production example file uses 4 for a typical 2-vCPU droplet. |
GUNICORN_TIMEOUT | No | 300 | Worker timeout in seconds. Set high (300 s) to accommodate long-running RAG inference requests that may take several seconds per query. |
Local Development Paths
These variables appear in backend/.env.local.example as convenience hints for local development. They are not read by Django or the RAG system’s Python code directly, but can be used by shell scripts or Docker Compose volume mounts to point to local data directories.
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
LOCAL_DATA_DIR | No | ./data | Local directory path for document storage and RAG data files during development. |
LOCAL_CHROMA_DIR | No | ./chroma_db_local | Local directory path for the ChromaDB persistence files during development. |
Security (Production)
These variables are only meaningful when DEBUG=False. They are ignored in local development.
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS | Prod | — | Comma-separated list of origins allowed to make cross-origin requests, e.g. https://your-domain.com,https://www.your-domain.com. |
SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT | No | False | When True, Django redirects all HTTP requests to HTTPS. Enable in production behind an SSL terminator. |
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE | No | False | When True, the session cookie is only sent over HTTPS connections. |
CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE | No | False | When True, the CSRF cookie is only sent over HTTPS connections. |
TZ | No | UTC | System timezone for the container or process. The production example uses America/Lima; Django’s internal TIME_ZONE is set to UTC and is independent of this variable. |
Frontend
The frontend is a React application configured via frontend/.env (or frontend/.env.example as a template). All variables are prefixed with REACT_APP_ to be picked up by Create React App at build time.
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|
REACT_APP_API_URL | Yes | http://localhost:8000 | Full URL of the Django backend API. The React app prefixes all /api/ requests with this value. In DigitalOcean App Platform, set this to ${backend.PUBLIC_URL} so it resolves automatically. |
PORT | No | 3000 | Port the React development server listens on. Does not affect the production build. |
REACT_APP_ENV | No | development | Runtime environment label surfaced to client-side code. Typical values: development, production. |
REACT_APP_DEBUG | No | true | Enables additional client-side debug logging when true. Set to false in production builds. |
REACT_APP_JWT_TOKEN_NAME | No | access_token | Key name used to store the JWT access token in browser storage. |
REACT_APP_JWT_REFRESH_NAME | No | refresh_token | Key name used to store the JWT refresh token in browser storage. |
REACT_APP_NAME | No | RAG Asistente | Application display name shown in the UI title and headings. |
REACT_APP_VERSION | No | 1.0.0 | Application version string surfaced in the UI or About screen. |
Minimal Development .env
The following snippet covers the minimum variables needed to run the full stack locally using ChromaDB and the OpenRouter LLM provider:
# backend/.env
DEBUG=true
ENVIRONMENT=local
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=local-dev-key-not-for-production
# Database — SQLite fallback used when DATABASE_URL is absent
# DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:password@localhost:5432/nisira_local
# Vector store — ChromaDB is simpler for local development
VECTOR_STORE_BACKEND=chroma
# LLM
LLM_PROVIDER=openrouter
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-your-key-here
# Embeddings (optional — overrides model default)
# EMBEDDING_MODEL=sentence-transformers/all-mpnet-base-v2
# EMBEDDING_DEVICE=cpu
# Google Drive (disabled by default)
ENABLE_GOOGLE_DRIVE=false
# CORS
ALLOWED_HOSTS=localhost,127.0.0.1
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=http://localhost:3000,http://127.0.0.1:3000
# frontend/.env
REACT_APP_API_URL=http://localhost:8000
Copy backend/.env.local.example to backend/.env and fill in your API keys
to get started. For production, copy .env.production.example to
.env.production at the repository root and update every CHANGE_ME value
before deploying.