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Next, set your OpenAI API key as an environment variable:

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

Note: This command sets the key only for your current terminal session. To make it permanent, add the export line to your shell's configuration file (e.g., ~/.zshrc).

Can't any 3rd party utility running in the same shell session phone home with the API key? I'd ideally want only codex to be able to access this var

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If you let malicious code run unsandboxed on your main account then you probably have bigger problems than an OpenAI API key getting leaked.

You mean running npm update at the "wrong time"?

You could create a shell function - e.g. `codex() { OPENAI="xyz" codex "$@" }'. To call the original command use `command codex ...`.

People downvoting legitimate questions on HN should be ashamed of themselves.

That's neat! I only asked because I haven't seen API keys used in the context of profile environment variables in shell before - there might be other common cases I'm unaware of

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