Debugging Env Var Issues
A concise checklist for incidents where local works but CI, staging, or production changes behavior.
Pattern
Missing, renamed, case-sensitive, or incorrectly scoped environment variables.
warningSymptoms
- arrow_rightLocal pass with CI failure
- arrow_rightUnexpected default config
- arrow_rightSecret-dependent path returns the wrong status
searchWhere to look
- arrow_rightRuntime config loader
- arrow_rightCI env names
- arrow_rightContainer env mapping
- arrow_rightCase-sensitive file or key references
buildCommon fixes
- arrow_rightValidate required env at startup
- arrow_rightUse one canonical key name
- arrow_rightAdd visible regression coverage for missing config