Environment variables

Variable	Required	Default	Description
MEALIE_URL	yes	—	Base URL of the Mealie instance, e.g. https://mealie.example.com
MEALIE_API_TOKEN	yes	—	API token from Settings → API Tokens; acts as the user who created it
MEALIE_READ_ONLY	no	false	Exactly true registers only the 17 read tools
MEALIE_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE	no	—	Sent as accept-language, e.g. de-DE; localises unit and label names
MEALIE_INSECURE_TLS	no	false	Exactly true accepts a self-signed certificate — scoped to this connection only

The booleans compare against the literal string true

MEALIE_READ_ONLY and MEALIE_INSECURE_TLS are only on when their value is exactly the string true. 1, yes, True — any typo — fails off. The startup banner on stderr reports the mode actually in effect; check it after changing the configuration.

MEALIE_URL

Must be an absolute http:// or https:// URL. The server exits at startup if the value

• does not parse as a URL,
• uses a scheme other than http or https,
• embeds credentials (https://user:pass@… — use MEALIE_API_TOKEN instead), or
• carries a query string or fragment (either would silently corrupt every request URL built from the base).

Plain http:// to a non-loopback host starts, but prints a warning: the token would travel unencrypted.

MEALIE_API_TOKEN

Created in Mealie under Settings → API Tokens. It is a secret: it acts as the user who created it and inherits that user's group, household and permissions — use a dedicated, non-admin user (see the trust model).

The token is deleted from the process environment as soon as it has been read, so child processes cannot pick it up out of /proc/<pid>/environ.

MEALIE_READ_ONLY

Exactly true registers only the 17 read tools; the 35 write and import tools are not registered at all, so a model cannot call them and does not see them in the catalog.

MEALIE_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE

Mealie honours the accept-language header on nearly every endpoint; it localises unit names, label names and validation messages. Unset, the choice is left to the server default.

MEALIE_INSECURE_TLS

Exactly true accepts a self-signed certificate. The override is scoped to the Mealie connection — it does not set NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED and does not affect any other TLS connection the process makes.

Missing configuration

Missing credentials are a warning, not a fatal error: the server still completes the MCP handshake and answers tools/list, so registries and sandbox inspectors can introspect it. Every API call then fails with setup instructions. A malformed MEALIE_URL is the exception and exits immediately — that one could send the token to the wrong host.