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Can I use environment variables in my profile?

Yes! Any field in profiles.yml can reference an environment variable using the env_var() Jinja function:

my_project:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: postgres
      host: localhost
      user: "{{ env_var('DBT_DEV_USER') }}"
      password: "{{ env_var('DBT_DEV_PASSWORD') }}"
      schema: "dbt_{{ env_var('DBT_USERNAME') }}"
      port: 5432
      threads: 4

This keeps sensitive credentials out of version control. Set the variables in your shell before running dbt:

export DBT_DEV_USER=alice
export DBT_DEV_PASSWORD=my_password
export DBT_USERNAME=alice

You can supply a default value as the second argument to avoid compilation errors when a variable isn't set:

schema: "dbt_{{ env_var('DBT_USERNAME', 'default') }}"

For a full walkthrough of how to configure separate dev, CI, and prod environments using env vars, see dbt Core environments.

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