Environment Variables

The Parlot SDK can be configured via environment variables or explicitly through parlotize() arguments.

Core telemetry and ingestion

Variable	Required	Default	Description
`PARLOT_ENDPOINT`	Yes*	None	Base URL of the Parlot OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) collector (e.g. `https://ingest.parlot.ai`). The SDK appends `/v1/traces` for spans, `/v1/metrics` for metrics (LiveKit), and `/v1/logs` for session application logs. *Required when `endpoint=` is omitted from `parlotize()`.
`PARLOT_API_KEY`	Yes*	None	Bearer token from Parlot Settings → API keys. Required for authenticated ingest, Settings bootstrap, and recording grants. Without it the process can start, but telemetry will not authenticate.
`PARLOT_DEBUG_LEVEL`	—	`INFO`	Level for Parlot loggers only (`parlot.`, including LiveKit / LangGraph / Pipecat instrumentation). Does not* raise the process root logger — so `DEBUG` will not flood `websockets` / `aiortc`. Values: `DEBUG`, `INFO`, `WARNING`, `ERROR`.

Deploy convention (not an SDK env var)

Pass agent_id as the first argument to parlotize(). A common deploy-manifest pattern is:

parlotize(os.environ["PARLOT_AGENT_ID"])

The SDK does not read PARLOT_AGENT_ID itself.

Capture policies (no env vars)

Recording, session logs, and generative AI (GenAI) content capture are controlled by:

Job / context metadata — e.g. LiveKit job metadata record, capture_logs, capture_genai_content
parlotize(...) arguments — record=, capture_logs=, capture_genai_content=
Settings — Settings → Recording, Settings → Logs, Settings → Gen AI content capture (loaded at bootstrap)
SDK defaults — capture policies default to on

When GenAI content capture is off, message and tool payloads are omitted; span structure, timings, token counts, and turn transcripts still export.

See Concepts → Recording vs telemetry and Agent policy allowlists.

Framework-specific variables

LiveKit Agents

When using parlot-instrumentation-livekit with LiveKit:

Variable	Required	Description
`LIVEKIT_URL`	Yes	WebSocket URL for your LiveKit server (e.g. `wss://my-project.livekit.cloud`).
`LIVEKIT_API_KEY`	Yes	LiveKit project API key (also used to start Room Composite recordings).
`LIVEKIT_API_SECRET`	Yes	LiveKit project API secret.