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Environment Variables

visual-node's editor server recognizes exactly two environment variables:

VariableDefaultPurpose
PORT4000The port the editor itself listens on.
VISUAL_NODE_PROJECT_DIRcurrent working directoryThe project directory the editor opens against. Overridden by a CLI argument if one is given.
PORT=5000 VISUAL_NODE_PROJECT_DIR=./my-project npx visual-node

:::caution Don't confuse the editor's port with your generated server's port PORT only controls the port the visual-node editor UI listens on. A generated server's port is whatever you configured on its express.listen node — it does not read PORT from the environment unless you explicitly wrote it that way yourself (e.g. inside a Handler Function or middleware.customCode node). :::

Precedence​

The project directory is resolved once, at startup, in this order:

  1. The first CLI positional argument (npx visual-node ./my-project).
  2. VISUAL_NODE_PROJECT_DIR.
  3. process.cwd().

See Project Directory for what visual-node expects to find (and will create) inside that directory.