Environment Variables Configuration

🎯 Global Configuration

Claude Context supports a global configuration file at ~/.context/.env to simplify MCP setup across different MCP clients.

Benefits:

• Configure once, use everywhere
• No need to specify environment variables in each MCP client
• Cleaner MCP configurations

📋 Environment Variable Priority

1. Process Environment Variables (highest)
2. Global Configuration File (~/.context/.env)
3. Default Values (lowest)

🔧 Required Environment Variables

Embedding Provider

Variable	Description	Default
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER	Provider: OpenAI, VoyageAI, Gemini, Ollama	OpenAI
OPENAI_API_KEY	OpenAI API key	Required for OpenAI
VOYAGEAI_API_KEY	VoyageAI API key	Required for VoyageAI
GEMINI_API_KEY	Gemini API key	Required for Gemini

Vector Database

Variable	Description	Default
MILVUS_TOKEN	Milvus authentication token. Get Zilliz Personal API Key	Recommended
MILVUS_ADDRESS	Milvus server address. Optional when using Zilliz Personal API Key	Auto-resolved from token

Ollama (Local)

Variable	Description	Default
OLLAMA_HOST	Ollama server URL	http://127.0.0.1:11434
OLLAMA_MODEL	Model name	nomic-embed-text

Advanced Configuration

Variable	Description	Default
HYBRID_MODE	Enable hybrid search (BM25 + dense vector). Set to false for dense-only search	true
EMBEDDING_BATCH_SIZE	Batch size for processing. Larger batch size means less indexing time	100
SPLITTER_TYPE	Code splitter type: ast, langchain	ast
CUSTOM_EXTENSIONS	Additional file extensions to include (comma-separated, e.g., .vue,.svelte,.astro)	None
CUSTOM_IGNORE_PATTERNS	Additional ignore patterns (comma-separated, e.g., temp/**,*.backup,private/**)	None

🚀 Quick Setup

1. Create Global Config

mkdir -p ~/.context
cat > ~/.context/.env << 'EOF'
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=OpenAI
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-openai-api-key
MILVUS_TOKEN=your-zilliz-cloud-api-key
EOF

2. Simplified MCP Configuration

Claude Code:

claude mcp add claude-context -- npx @zilliz/claude-context-mcp@latest

Cursor/Windsurf/Others:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "claude-context": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@zilliz/claude-context-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

📚 Additional Information

For detailed information about file processing rules and how custom patterns work, see:

• What files does Claude Context decide to embed?