---
title: Introduction
description: Introduction to Varlock, the AI-safe env var toolkit for validating, securing, and sharing your environment variables
---

import { LinkButton } from "@astrojs/starlight/components";

Varlock is a universal configuration/secrets/environment variable management tool built on top of the [@env-spec](/env-spec/overview/) specification. It helps you manage, validate, and secure your environment configuration, with type-safe environment variables, multi-environment management, secure secret handling, and leak prevention. While it is written in TypeScript, it is language and framework agnostic, and meant to be used in any project that needs configuration at build or boot time, usually passed in via environment variables.

## Features

Varlock provides:

- **[AI-Safe Config](/guides/ai-tools/)** - Your `.env.schema` gives AI agents full context on your config without ever exposing secret values. Prevent leaks to AI servers, and scan for leaked secrets with `varlock scan`
- **[Security](/guides/secrets/)** - Automatic log redaction for sensitive values, leak detection in bundled code and server responses, and proactive scanning via `varlock scan`
- **[Validation & Type Safety](/reference/data-types/)** - Validation with clear error messages, plus automatic type generation for IntelliSense support
- **[Secure Secrets](/guides/secrets/)** - Built-in [device-local encryption](/guides/local-encryption/) with hardware-backed security (Secure Enclave, TPM), plus provider [plugins](/plugins/overview/) (e.g., [1Password](/plugins/1password/), [AWS](/plugins/aws-secrets/), [HashiCorp Vault](/plugins/hashicorp-vault/)) or any CLI tool using [exec()](/reference/functions/#exec)
- **[Multi-Environment Management](/guides/environments/)** - Flexible environment handling with support for environment-specific files, local overrides, and value composition
- **[Value Composition](/reference/functions/)** - Compose values together using functions, references, and external data sources
- **[Framework Integrations](/integrations/overview/)** - Official integrations for Next.js, Vite, Astro, and more, plus support for any language via `varlock run`
- **[Replacement for dotenv](/guides/migrate-from-dotenv/)** - Can be used as a direct replacement for `dotenv` in most projects with minimal code changes

## AI tooling

Varlock is built for AI-assisted development: your `.env.schema` gives agents schema context without exposing secret values. See the [AI Tools guide](/guides/ai-tools/) for `varlock run` with coding CLIs, the maintainer skill, [Docs MCP](/guides/mcp/#docs-mcp), and [LLMs.txt](https://varlock.dev/llms.txt).

## Next Steps

Ready to get started? Check out the [Installation](/getting-started/installation/) guide to set up Varlock in your project, or build a tailored setup prompt for your AI tool:

<div class="cta-button-row">
  <LinkButton href="/prompt-builder/">Open Prompt Builder</LinkButton>
</div>

