Deployment environment
One setting changes how strictly everything else is validated.
Synopsis
environment = "development"
Options
| Setting | Default | Env var | When to change |
|---|---|---|---|
environment | "development" | ORION_ENVIRONMENT | Set to "production" before exposing an instance to anything you care about. |
Any value starting with prod (case-insensitive) is a production environment, which turns three warnings into startup errors:
- Admin auth must be enabled.
admin_auth.enabled = falsebecomes a fatal config error instead of a log line nobody reads. - CORS may not be
["*"]. The wildcard is rejected; list explicit origins. - A cluster may not migrate at boot.
cluster.enabled = truewithstorage.auto_migrate = trueis refused. Seeauto_migratein a cluster.
That is the whole mechanism — it does not change any other default. Everything else on this page is still yours to set, and the Production Checklist is the list worth walking.
The variable is ORION_ENVIRONMENT, derived from the field name like every other override. ORION_ENV was the pre-1.0 alias and is now refused at startup rather than silently ignored.
Related
- Production checklist: what a production instance must set.
- Secure an instance: the checks production turns into errors.
- Server settings: the settings
verbose_errorsand the API docs key off this one. - Server configuration: every section, by what you are configuring.
Last verified 14 September 2026