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This quickstart guide walks you through the recommended secrets management workflow for local development. You’ll create a project, add secrets to one of its environments, and inject them into your local application using the Infisical CLI, all without needing a .env file.
Prerequisites:

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Step 1: Configure in Infisical

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Create a project

In Infisical, a project holds all secrets for one application or service. To create a project:
1
Log in to Infisical.
2
Select Secrets Management > + Add New Project.
3
In the Project Name field, enter a name for the project (e.g., orders-service).
4
Select Create Project.
This opens your new project in the Development environment:
New project
Within a project, secrets are organized across environments. Every new project starts with three environments: Development, Staging, and Production.

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Add your secrets

You have two options for adding secrets to your project:
To create a new secret from scratch:
1
Select + Add a New Secret.
2
In the Key and Value fields, enter a key-value pair. For example:
Key and Value fields
3
Select Create Secret.
4
Repeat these steps for each key-value pair you want to add.

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Step 2: Connect your app to Infisical

Now that you’ve set up a project that holds your secrets in Infisical, you can connect your application and give it access to those secrets at runtime.

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Authenticate with the CLI

Authenticate with the Infisical CLI by running infisical login:
This prompts you to select your hosting option, then opens your browser to complete the login.
In a containerized environment such as WSL 2 or Codespaces, run infisical login -i to avoid browser-based login.

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Connect your project

Next, connect your application to your Infisical project:
1
In your application’s directory, link it to the Infisical project you created by running infisical init:
2
Follow the prompts to select the organization/project where you created your secrets earlier. This writes a .infisical.json file to your project with local project settings:
.infisical.json
.infisical.json files contain no secrets and are safe to commit to version control systems like git.

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Step 3: Inject secrets into your app

Now that your Infisical project is configured within your application, Infisical can provide the secrets. Start your application by wrapping its start command with infisical run:
Infisical fetches the secrets and injects them as environment variables. This lets your application read the secrets from its environment at runtime.
You can now manage your application’s secrets through Infisical without needing a .env file.

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Next Steps

Core Concepts

Understand how projects, environments, folders, and secrets fit together.

Secrets Delivery

Deliver secrets to production with SDKs, agents, Kubernetes, and CI/CD.

Local Development Guide

Set up a secure local development workflow for your whole team.

Access Control

Scope who can access which environments and paths.