Configuration

All settings are configured via environment variables prefixed with MYCELLM_. They can be set in:

~/.config/mycellm/.env (written by mycellm init)
Shell environment
Docker -e flags

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
`MYCELLM_API_KEY`	(none)	API key for dashboard/API authentication
`MYCELLM_BOOTSTRAP_PEERS`	(none)	Bootstrap node addresses (`host:port`, comma-separated)
`MYCELLM_HF_TOKEN`	(none)	HuggingFace token for gated models + higher rate limits
`MYCELLM_DB_URL`	SQLite	Database URL (`postgresql+asyncpg://user:pass@host/db`)
`MYCELLM_TELEMETRY`	`false`	Opt-in anonymous usage stats
`MYCELLM_LOG_LEVEL`	`INFO`	Log verbosity: `DEBUG`, `INFO`, `WARNING`, `ERROR`
`MYCELLM_RELAY_BACKENDS`	(none)	Relay endpoints (comma-separated OpenAI-compatible URLs)
`MYCELLM_MODEL_DIR`	`~/.local/share/mycellm/models`	GGUF model download directory
`MYCELLM_DATA_DIR`	`~/.local/share/mycellm`	All persistent data
`MYCELLM_CONFIG_DIR`	`~/.config/mycellm`	Configuration directory
`MYCELLM_API_HOST`	`127.0.0.1`	API bind address
`MYCELLM_API_PORT`	`8420`	API port
`MYCELLM_QUIC_PORT`	`8421`	QUIC transport port (UDP)
`MYCELLM_EXTERNAL_HOST`	(none)	Public IP override for NAT traversal
`MYCELLM_NODE_NAME`	hostname	Display name for this node
`MYCELLM_INITIAL_CREDITS`	`100.0`	Starting credit balance

Ports

Port	Protocol	Purpose
8420	TCP	HTTP API + Dashboard
8421	UDP	QUIC P2P transport
8422	UDP	DHT discovery (optional)

File Layout

~/.local/share/mycellm/
├── keys/              # Ed25519 account + device keys
├── certs/             # Device certificates
├── tls/               # Self-signed TLS for QUIC
├── models/            # Downloaded GGUF files
├── federation/        # Network identity + memberships
├── secrets.json       # Encrypted API keys (Fernet)
├── mycellm.db         # SQLite database
└── model_configs.json # Saved model configurations

~/.config/mycellm/
└── .env               # Environment overrides

PostgreSQL

For larger networks, switch from SQLite to PostgreSQL:

MYCELLM_DB_URL="postgresql+asyncpg://user:pass@localhost/mycellm"

Install the PostgreSQL driver:

pip install "mycellm[postgres]"