Environment variables

The Atlas

Variable	Effect
ATLAS_HOME	Data folder instead of ~/.the-atlas
ATLAS_LANG	Interface language (uz, ru, en) when none is saved with atlas lang
ATLAS_KEEP_SCREEN	Keep the chat on screen after quitting. By default the screen and scrollback are cleared
ATLAS_NO_ANIM	Print the logo at once, without the typing animation
ATLAS_ASCII	Plain ASCII glyphs and a one-line logo
ATLAS_UNICODE	Use Unicode glyphs even where detection says the font cannot draw them
ATLAS_FFMPEG	Full path to ffmpeg for voice input

Any non-empty value turns a flag on, e.g. ATLAS_ASCII=1.

Colour

Variable	Effect
NO_COLOR	Any non-empty value turns colour off
FORCE_COLOR	0 off, 1 16 colours, 2 256 colours, 3 truecolor

See Terminals.

Provider keys

Used only when no key for that provider is stored in config.json.

Variable	Provider
OPENROUTER_API_KEY	OpenRouter
GEMINI_API_KEY	Google Gemini
GROQ_API_KEY	Groq (also used for voice)
CEREBRAS_API_KEY	Cerebras
MISTRAL_API_KEY	Mistral
GITHUB_TOKEN	GitHub Models
NVIDIA_API_KEY	NVIDIA NIM
SAMBANOVA_API_KEY	SambaNova
OMNIROUTE_API_KEY	OmniRoute
OPENAI_API_KEY	OpenAI (also used for voice when there is no Groq key)
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Anthropic Claude

Ollama needs no key.

Other tools

Variable	Effect
CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR	Where atlas statusline --install claude looks for Claude Code’s settings.json (default ~/.claude)

Setting a variable

# macOS, Linux: one run
ATLAS_LANG=en atlas
# for the session
export ATLAS_LANG=en

# Windows PowerShell: this session
$env:ATLAS_LANG = "en"
# permanently, for your user
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("ATLAS_LANG", "en", "User")