Render Env Guard

Use this skill when a deployment is failing because environment variables are missing, placeholder values leaked from templates, or service selection is ambiguous.

What this skill does

• Resolves a Render service by ID or name
• Pulls service environment variables through Render API
• Validates required keys exist and are non-empty
• Flags suspicious values (template placeholders, localhost DB URLs, unexpanded ${VAR} refs)
• Exits non-zero on any blocking issue so CI/deploy scripts can fail fast

When to use

• Before render deploy / render blueprint updates
• After onboarding a new environment
• When runtime is showing config-related 5xx errors

Inputs

• RENDER_API_KEY (required)
• one of:
  • RENDER_SERVICE_ID
  • RENDER_SERVICE_NAME
• optional:
  • RENDER_API_BASE_URL (default https://api.render.com/v1)
  • REQUIRED_ENV_KEYS (comma-separated, default: DATABASE_URL,DIRECT_URL,SHADOW_DATABASE_URL,NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL)

Run

bash scripts/check-render-env.sh

or with explicit values:

RENDER_SERVICE_NAME=my-service \
REQUIRED_ENV_KEYS="DATABASE_URL,NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL,STRIPE_SECRET_KEY" \
bash scripts/check-render-env.sh

Output contract

• Prints a short report with PASS/FAIL
• Returns exit code 0 when all required keys are valid
• Returns exit code 1 when any key is missing/invalid or service lookup fails

Notes

• This checker is intentionally strict to prevent bad deploys.
• It validates values at the service level (what Render will inject at runtime), not local .env files.