Environment Variables

All variables are read from .env at the repo root (if it exists) and then from the shell environment. Shell variables take precedence over .env.

.env.example

ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=your_key_here
# ELEVENLABS_VOICE_ID=21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM
# ELEVENLABS_MODEL_ID=eleven_multilingual_v2

Variables

ELEVENLABS_API_KEY

Required. Your ElevenLabs API key. Get one at elevenlabs.io.

build.py exits immediately with an error if this is not set.

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ELEVENLABS_VOICE_ID

Optional. Default: 21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM (Rachel).

The ID of the ElevenLabs voice to use for all scenes. Browse voices and find their IDs in the ElevenLabs voice library.

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ELEVENLABS_MODEL_ID

Optional. Default: eleven_multilingual_v2.

The ElevenLabs model to use for TTS. Available models:

Model ID	Notes
eleven_multilingual_v2	Default — good quality, supports 29 languages
eleven_turbo_v2	Faster, lower latency, English-optimised
eleven_monolingual_v1	Legacy English-only model

.env loading behaviour

build.py parses .env itself (no shell sourcing). It handles:

• KEY=VALUE lines
• Lines starting with # (comments) — ignored
• Blank lines — ignored
• No shell variable expansion ($VAR references in values are kept literal)

The .env file is gitignored. Never commit it.