Your first project

This guide walks you through a project from empty to useful: environments, files, a first saved version, and day-to-day use. If you signed up at crunu.com, you already have my-first-project with development and production, and you can start at step 2.

Example. Kiteline is a fictional company. Priya creates payments-api with development, staging and production and adds the team's .env and AWS credentials.

1. Create a project

On Projects, choose New project:

1. Enter the project name, such as payments-api. Everyone who can see the project sees its name, and you can change it later.
2. Choose environments. dev and prod are selected. Tick stage if you need it, and list any other environments under Other environments, separated by commas.
3. Create project.

Each environment is encrypted with its own key: access to dev gives no access to prod. Each new environment starts with one empty .env file.

Creating shared projects is up to owners and admins. If you're a member, use your Personal project for your own files, or ask an admin.

2. Add files

Open an environment, for example payments-api / development. You can add files in three ways:

• Drag files or whole folders, such as .aws or .cloudflare, onto the page. Crunu guesses each file's path on a computer from its folder, name and contents, and shows the guess with the field names, without values. Check the paths and choose Add.
• Choose files… opens a file picker.
• Paste the text of a .env file into the .env file's Raw text tab.

Crunu shows env files as a table of variables, INI files such as ~/.aws/credentials as fields by section, and flat YAML as fields. Anything else is kept as text. See Files and variables.

If an env file should become the process environment of a program started with crunu run, tick Load as environment variables (crunu run) on it.

3. Save a version

Changes collect in the Unsaved bar, which lists them by name only. Choose Save ⌘S. The app confirms, for example Saved: version 2. Every save is a signed, encrypted version, and the latest 100 are kept. See Versions and history.

4. Fill the other environments

To start production from development without carrying values over, create it as a copy with Variable names only, no values, or compare the two environments and copy what you need. See Compare and promote environments.

5. Use values day to day

• Values are hidden by default. Show values reveals them, and each row can show, copy or edit one value.
• Copy puts a value on the clipboard. After a minute, Crunu clears the clipboard if your value is still on it and the tab is active.
• ⌘K, or Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux, searches variable names, services, paths and actions across your environments. Values are never searched. Enter on a variable copies its value.
• Generate fills in a random value of 40 characters when you need a new secret.
• Where to issue a new key on files of known services, such as AWS or Stripe, links to the place where you'd reissue a value.

Every show, copy and export is recorded in the audit log, without the value.

6. Get the files onto a computer

• On your own computer, use Install on computer… to download an install script for the files you choose. It writes them with mode 0600, keeps the previous version as .prev, and checks their checksums.
• On a server, install the agent. See Install the agent.
• In CI, use a service token. See Connect CI.

Tips for naming

Names of projects and environments are visible to the server as metadata. Don't make a name a secret in itself. The app colors environments by kind from their names: dev green, stage yellow and prod red, and names like production or live count as prod.

Next: Invite your team.