Environment Variables & Settings
Reference material for configuring and understanding loxel’s runtime behavior.
Environment Variables
Most of these you set once in your shell profile. The LOXEL_* injection variables are set automatically by loxel in every terminal it opens — you don’t configure them. See Terminals for how these are used in practice, and TypeScript Intelligence for LOXEL_TS_LSP.
| Variable | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
LOXEL_DEV | Dev mode: separate state directory, port 7434 instead of 7433 | (unset = prod) |
LOXEL_TS_LSP | TypeScript LSP backend: tsgo or tsls | tsgo |
LOXEL_STATIC_DIR | Override the frontend assets directory | Auto-detect |
LOXEL_PORT | Auto-injected in terminals: port of the running loxel server | (injected) |
LOXEL_WORKTREE | Auto-injected in terminals: worktree path for that terminal | (injected) |
LOXEL_WINDOW_ID | Auto-injected in terminals: Electron window ID | (injected) |
LOXEL | Auto-injected in terminals: always 1 | (injected) |
OPENROUTER_API_KEY | Required for the built-in coding agent | (none) |
OPENROUTER_MODEL_PLANNER | Model used for planning steps | z-ai/glm-5 |
OPENROUTER_MODEL_EXECUTOR | Model used for execution steps | moonshotai/kimi-k2.5 |
OPENROUTER_MODEL_FALLBACK | Fallback model | openrouter/auto |
OPENROUTER_WEBSEARCH_MODEL | Model for the WebSearch tool (required to enable WebSearch) | (none) |
Note: Inside a loxel terminal,
LOXEL=1is always set. You can use this in scripts and shell prompts to detect when you’re running inside loxel.
File Locations
All loxel state lives under ~/.local/state/loxel/. Dev mode (LOXEL_DEV set) uses loxel-dev/ instead.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
projects.db | SQLite — registered projects |
stores.db | SQLite — panel layouts and internal store |
comments/{repoHash}.db | SQLite — code review sessions and comments; one file per repo, shared across all worktrees of that repo |
detached/{projectHash}/{wtHash}/ | Draft markdown and excalidraw files |
logs/server-{instanceId}.log | Server logs in NDJSON format; rotated at 5 MB |
updates/ | Downloaded update archives |
Hashes are the first 12 hex characters of the SHA-256 of the relevant path (repo common dir, project path, or worktree path).
Review database sharing: all worktrees of the same repo share one
comments/{repoHash}.db. Review sessions and comments are not scoped to a worktree — they are repo-wide. Drafts, by contrast, are scoped per project + worktree.
loxel CLI
The loxel CLI is introduced in Terminals. Full reference:
loxel [file-path | url]| Invocation | Behavior |
|---|---|
loxel | Launch loxel if not running, or focus the existing window |
loxel src/app.ts | Open a file in the running loxel instance |
loxel https://... | Open a URL in loxel’s browser panel |
Server detection: loxel tries port 7433 (prod) then 7434 (dev), with a 1-second timeout on each. Inside a loxel terminal, LOXEL_PORT is already set and used directly — no detection needed. If no server is found, loxel launches and the CLI waits up to 15 seconds for it to become ready.
Worktree resolution: when opening a file, loxel runs git rev-parse --show-toplevel on the file’s directory to identify the worktree. Inside a loxel terminal, it falls back to LOXEL_WORKTREE if the file path doesn’t resolve to a git repo. If no worktree can be determined and no fallback is available, the command errors.
Settings
Open settings with ,. Panel layout is persisted server-side in stores.db; other settings persist in browser localStorage.
| Section | What you configure |
|---|---|
| General | Auto-reveal active file in the file explorer when switching tabs |
| Coding Agent | Model profiles, default session mode (execute or plan), tool profile (execute / plan / minimal) — see Coding Agent |
| Models | Model library — add or remove OpenRouter model entries with their API keys |
| Keybindings | Per-action shortcut overrides — see Keyboard Shortcuts |
| Terminal | Scrollback buffer size (1,000–100,000 lines; default 3,000), notification sequences — see Terminals |
| Editor | Indentation, formatting per language or file extension, format-on-autosave — see Editor |
| File Associations | Glob-to-language mappings for custom file types |
| Schemas | JSON and YAML schema mappings; tsconfig.json, package.json, GitHub workflow files, and wt.yaml are built in |