Electron environment

Electron starts the login shell and reads its environment before it creates the first window. The operation has a five-second timeout. It runs on macOS and Linux.

Electron replaces PATH with the login-shell value. For other variables, it keeps an existing process value and adds only missing values. This behavior makes provider credentials and tool paths available to pi.

The shell comes from SHELL, or from the account shell when SHELL is not set.

The shell runs interactively, so its login startup files apply. On Linux, this is how a desktop entry picks up shell exports. For Bash, ~/.bashrc applies when ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile sources it, as most Linux distributions configure.

Browser development uses a different rule. The Vite process inherits the environment of the terminal that starts npm run dev.

If Electron cannot load the shell environment, it continues to start. Provider or tool operations can then fail because a variable is absent. See Troubleshooting.