Purpose

Job 1083 promoted every previously-optional knob in .env.example to required, and renamed three of them. Operators must populate the full set before the container will boot.

Required Variables

Variable	Example value	Purpose
`MASTODON_BASE_URL`	`https://mastodon.social`	Mastodon instance to post against.
`MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN`	(from your Mastodon account)	OAuth access token.
`VISIBILITY`	`public`	Post visibility (`public` or `unlisted`).
`SITE_URL`	`https://blog.example.com`	Source blog URL (used by the future clone step).
`HASHTAGS`	`#throwback,#10backward`	Hashtags appended to every throwback post.
`THROWNBACK_PREFIX`	`Throwback:`	Prefix prepended to every post.
`MAX_RETRIES`	`3`	Non-negative retry count for the pipeline.
`RUN_AT`	`09:00`	Daily fire time (HH:MM, 24-hour).
`TZ`	`Europe/Berlin`	IANA timezone for cron + container clock.

Where Each Name Is Enforced

entrypoint.sh — exports TZ, validates all nine are non-empty, and validates RUN_AT matches ^([01][0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5][0-9]$ before writing the cron file. A missing var aborts the container with ERROR: missing required environment variable(s): ... and exits 1.
tenbackward.config.validate_config — same set, plus URL/visibility/ TZ/MAX_RETRIES validation. Failures surface as a single ConfigError listing every problem.
The kilo.json config file is not an env-var file — it is the agent runtime configuration.

Setup Steps

Copy the template:
```
cp .env.example .env
```
Replace placeholder values in .env (the example ships with MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN=replace-me and https://mastodon.example).
Verify the file parses by running the validator directly:
```
python -m tenbackward
```
A successful validation run emits one startup JSON log line and exits 0. Missing/invalid config exits 2.
Bring up the container:
```
docker compose up --build
```
The required-var check in entrypoint.sh runs first; if any variable is empty, the container exits before cron starts.

Renames vs. Job 1082

Old key	New key
`MASTODON_VISIBILITY`	`VISIBILITY`
`THROWBACK_PREFIX`	`THROWNBACK_PREFIX`
`RETRY_COUNT`	`MAX_RETRIES`

If you have an existing .env from the scaffold, rename these manually. The renamed variables are not backwards compatible — the container will refuse to start with both versions set.

Defaults That Can Be Removed

DEFAULTS provides fallbacks for VISIBILITY, THROWNBACK_PREFIX, MAX_RETRIES, TZ, and RUN_AT. You may leave them out of your .env, but the operator contract is "every required key is set" — prod deployments should set them explicitly so a missing key is caught at boot instead of silently used as a default.

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