Pane does not manage AI provider auth — the agent does. Pane gives each agent a clean shell environment from which it reads its own env vars. Set the right key in the right pane’s shell and the agent handles the rest.

Provider quick reference

Why Pane’s isolated worktrees prevent env-var collision

Each pane runs in its own worktree directory with its own shell session. Setting ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in one pane’s shell does not leak into another pane’s shell. This lets you:

• Run two agents simultaneously with different provider keys (e.g. test Claude vs GPT-4o on the same task).
• Isolate customer credentials — one pane uses the customer’s Bedrock role, another uses your personal Anthropic key.
• Keep dev and prod keys separate in the same editor session without juggling shell windows.

Setting env vars per pane

Open a terminal with ⌘+⌥+1 and export your key directly:

The export applies only to that pane’s shell process and its children. Other panes are unaffected.

Using .envrc or .env

Pane respects standard shell-level env loaders.

direnv — add a .envrc to the worktree root:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."

Then run direnv allow once. direnv loads the vars automatically whenever you enter that directory.

dotenv-cli — prefix your command:

dotenv -- claude

Both approaches scope env vars to the worktree directory, so values never bleed across panes.

Related

• MCP servers — configure MCP servers that agents use to call external tools
• Environment variables — full reference for Pane-injected vars
• Security & permissions — what leaves your machine and what does not