I Built an AI-Powered .env Manager for VS Code — Here's What I Learned

Managing .env files is one of those things that sounds simple until you're on a team of 5, juggling 4 environments, and someone accidentally commits a Stripe secret key to GitHub at 2am. I built DotEnvy — a VS Code extension that handles environment switching, secret detection, and encrypted backups. Version 1.6.0 just shipped and it's the most technically interesting release yet. Let me walk you through what's inside. Install it: VS Code Marketplace Open VSX Registry The Problem Every project I've worked on has this folder structure: .env .env.development .env.staging .env.production And every developer has their own "system" for switching between them — usually cp .env.staging .env and hoping they didn't forget. That's how secrets leak. That's how production breaks. DotEnvy fixes this with one command: DotEnvy: Switch Environment . See the new AI Secrets Scanner in action: v1.6.0: The Big Changes 1. OS-Encrypted Secret Storage The old version embedded the HMAC shared secret directly