9/4/2026
Development
Why I Built My Own ENV Vault
I built ENV Vault CLTD because I was tired of hunting for the things I needed to work on my projects. Credentials were in one place, project links were somewhere else, and environment variables were tucked away in individual project folders. Every time I switched projects, I had to piece everything together again.
I wanted one workspace where I could organize those details by project. I also didn’t want another monthly subscription just to keep track of my own work, so I decided to build something I could host privately myself.
A Home for Each Project
Project organization is the starting point. I wanted to open a project and find its links, Website Logins, and Environment Variables together, without searching through unrelated notes or trying to remember where I saved something.
Website Logins gives me a place for the login details associated with each project. Environment Variables keeps the configuration values alongside the project they belong to. Having those separate areas in the same workspace makes it easier to find what I need when I come back to a build.
From Environment Variables to a .env File
I also wanted the workspace to help with setup, not just storage. The .env export lets me take a project’s environment variables and export them into a .env file, instead of copying each value by hand when I’m getting a project running.
A Workspace I Can Host Privately
ENV Vault is designed for private self-hosting through Vercel and Neon, with the app deployed on Vercel and the database hosted on Neon. I wanted to manage my own deployment and keep the workspace tied to my own projects.
Avoiding another subscription was part of the motivation, but the bigger benefit for me is being able to shape the tool around how I actually work. Hosting and database costs still depend on the services and plans used for a deployment.
Continuing to Build
You can try ENV Vault CLTD using the link below. I’ll keep adding features and making improvements as I use it in my own workflow and find more ways to make organizing projects easier.