Environment Setup

Configure your development environment for LLM applications

Environment Setup

Set up your development environment for building LLM applications.

Python Environment

venv

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install --upgrade pip

conda

conda create -n llm-apps python=3.11
conda activate llm-apps

Environment Variables

Create a .env file in your project root:

# OpenAI
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

# Anthropic
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# Google
GOOGLE_API_KEY=AIza...

# Search APIs
SERPAPI_KEY=...
TAVILY_API_KEY=tvly-...

# Vector Databases
QDRANT_URL=http://localhost:6333
QDRANT_API_KEY=...

Never commit .env files to version control. Add .env to your .gitignore.

Load Environment Variables

from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

load_dotenv()

openai_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")

Docker Setup

For services like vector databases:

# Qdrant
docker run -p 6333:6333 qdrant/qdrant

# ChromaDB
docker run -p 8000:8000 chromadb/chroma

Related Resources

Installation Guide

Complete installation instructions