Environment Settings

Local runtime configuration for the ADK lives in .env at the project root. This file is created by genie setup. Values here affect how the agent connects to AsterQuanta on this machine only. They are not pushed to the platform with genie update.

Standard variables

Variable	Description
SECRET	Client key for the AsterQuanta platform. Required for genie run and API access.
AES_HOST	Platform hostname (without scheme), for example genie.asterquanta.com.
AES_PORT	Platform port, usually 443.
SSL_ENABLED	1 for HTTPS/WSS, 0 for plain HTTP/WS in local development.

Optional logging variables (see Agents — Logging):

Variable	Description
ADK_LOG_LEVEL / LOG_LEVEL	Console log verbosity, for example DEBUG.

Instance ID (multi-instance deployments)

INSTANCE_ID identifies a single running agent process when more than one copy of the same agent shares the same SECRET (for example multiple containers, VMs, or machines serving the same registered agent).

Variable	Description
INSTANCE_ID	Unique id for this process. Usually left empty on first setup.

How it works

1. On first connection, if INSTANCE_ID is not set, the platform may assign one and the ADK saves it to .env for future runs.
2. Subsequent heartbeats include this id so the platform can route work and track capacity per process.

You normally do not need to set INSTANCE_ID manually.

Running multiple copies of one agent

Use the same project layout and SECRET on each machine or container, but give each running process its own identity:

• New deployment — leave INSTANCE_ID unset (or remove it from .env). Each process receives its own id on first connect.
• Cloning an agent directory — copy settings.json and source code as needed, but do not copy another machine's INSTANCE_ID into a second concurrent process. Two live processes must not share the same instance id.

This lets you scale horizontally: several agent processes can accept optimizations in parallel while the platform treats them as separate workers under one registration.

note

Editing .env requires restarting the agent for changes to take effect.