Varlock
.env files with a schema: safe for agents, secrets kept from them.
Dev workflow and config npm MIT
How Varlock is used
Varlock joined the catalog on its public numbers (223,412 downloads a week on npm and 4,798 GitHub stars), not on our project count: it is a dependency in 13 public GitHub projects of our scan, 13 of them set up for AI coding agents. The most used alternative in our scan is dotenv (966 projects). Projects that use it most often also use tsx (61.5%), Better Auth (53.8%), Zod (69.2%).
Varlock popularity over time
Gid Score 47: downloads 50, use in agent projects 21, GitHub stars 38, downloads trend 100 (each 0-100). How it is calculated.
Often used with Varlock
| tsx | 61.5% of Varlock projects · 4.1× more than average |
|---|---|
| Better Auth | 53.8% of Varlock projects · 32.5× more than average |
| Zod | 69.2% of Varlock projects · 2.8× more than average |
| TypeScript | 100.0% of Varlock projects · 1.8× more than average |
| Biome | 38.5% of Varlock projects · 6.8× more than average |
| lint-staged | 38.5% of Varlock projects · 4.9× more than average |
| Husky | 38.5% of Varlock projects · 3.8× more than average |
| Ultracite | 30.8% of Varlock projects · 28.5× more than average |
By coding agent
| Cursor | 0.4% of projects set up for it |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | 0.2% of projects set up for it |
| OpenAI Codex | 1.3% of projects set up for it |
Share of public repos configured for each agent that list Varlock as a dependency.
Install
| Package | npm install varlock |
|---|---|
| Main stacks | TypeScript / JavaScript (11), Next.js (2) |
Alternatives to Varlock
Tools that do the same job, so a project picks one or the other. Add-ons and libraries used alongside Varlock are not listed here; they are in "Often used with".
| Tool | Gid Score | Used in agent projects | Downloads / wk | GitHub stars | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dotenv npm Load environment variables from .env files into process.env. |
84 | 966 (20.0%) | 112M | 20.6K | BSD-2-Clause |
More in Dev workflow and config: Husky python-dotenv lint-staged concurrently Rich Pydantic Settings cross-env chalk