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Standalone plugin environment

Standalone connector plugins run as separate processes. When Conduit starts one, the plugin receives Conduit's own environment variables as well as the CONDUIT_CONNECTOR_* variables Conduit sets for it. The host environment is appended after Conduit's values, so when a host variable has the same name as one Conduit sets, the plugin sees the host value.

Starting with v0.20.2, Conduit warns about this at startup. The environment plugins receive is unchanged.

The warning​

When connectors.path contains at least one standalone connector, Conduit logs one warning per process:

WRN host environment variables are passed to standalone plugin processes; a future release will
    restrict the plugin environment to an allowlist (...) code=plugin.standalone_env_passed
    env_names=["AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID","AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY","DATABASE_URL"]

It lists variable names only. Values are never logged.

conduit doctor reports the same condition as a warn finding named plugins.standalone_env, with the code plugin.standalone_env_passed:

conduit doctor --check plugins.standalone_env --json

Doctor counts any non-directory file in connectors.path, so a stray file there can produce the finding while the engine, which counts plugins that loaded, stays quiet. The MCP doctor tool reports only a count, never names, because its result goes back to the MCP client.

What is listed​

Host variables that standalone plugins will receive and whose names look like credentials. Matching is case-insensitive. Among others, a name is listed when it contains PASSWORD, PASSWD, PASSPHRASE, TOKEN or SECRET; starts with AWS_, AZURE_, GOOGLE_ or GCP_; ends with _KEY, _CREDENTIALS, _DSN, _CONNECTION_STRING, _JAAS_CONFIG or _PROXY; or is a database or broker URL such as DATABASE_URL, PGURI or KAFKA_URL. The full rules are in the operator runbook.

PWD, OLDPWD, NO_PROXY and boolean switches such as SKIP_AUTH are never listed. CONDUIT_* names are listed only when they also match a rule. The list is advisory: every variable is passed, and the rules only pick out the ones that look like secrets.

What to do​

  1. Install only plugins you trust. A standalone plugin is native code that runs as the same OS user as Conduit, with this environment.

  2. Start Conduit with a minimal environment, for example through your service manager's environment settings or env -i PATH=... conduit run. Prefer a secrets mechanism your connectors read directly over exporting credentials into the Conduit process.

  3. Once you have reviewed the list and accept it, silence the warning with any of:

    # conduit.yaml
    connectors:
      standalone:
        env-warning: false
    • the flag --connectors.standalone.env-warning=false;
    • the environment variable CONDUIT_CONNECTORS_STANDALONE_ENV_WARNING=false;
    • Options.SilenceStandalonePluginEnvWarning when you embed Conduit.

    This silences the warning and the doctor finding. It does not change what plugins receive.

What changes in a future release​

A future release will restrict the plugin environment to an allowlist: the minor release after the first release that carries this warning. Its release notes will say so. Plugins that read variables from the host environment will then need those variables listed explicitly. Use the names in this warning as the starting point for that list.

Alerting​

Alert on the log field code=plugin.standalone_env_passed, or on the doctor finding with the same code.