Configuration and API Keys

Configuration & API keys

MediaHound works zero-key by default (Tesseract OCR + Wikidata for movies, MusicBrainz + Cover Art Archive for music). API keys are optional and only make metadata/posters richer.

config.toml

mediahound init scaffolds config.toml. It picks the identify/metadata providers and paths. The defaults are offline-friendly; edit it to opt into online providers. See config.example.toml.

🔑 API keys (optional)

Providers that need a key: TMDB and OMDb (movie metadata/posters) and Anthropic (Claude vision identification).

Set them in the admin console (recommended)

⚙ Settings → API keys → paste a key → Save.

• Stored in your computer's OS keychain (macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Manager / Linux Secret Service) — never written to a file, never shown back to the browser (the panel only shows ✓ set / not set).
• The build reads them automatically. After saving, run ↻ Rebuild with online enabled (or mediahound build --online).
• For security this panel is localhost-only — hidden and refused over --phone/LAN mode, so keys never travel the network.

Or use a .env file

Prefer files? Put them in a gitignored .env next to config.toml:

TMDB_API_KEY=…
OMDB_API_KEY=…
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=…

Precedence: real environment variables → .env → the OS keychain.

Where to get keys

• TMDB — https://www.themoviedb.org/settings/api (free)
• OMDb — http://www.omdbapi.com/apikey.aspx (free tier)
• Anthropic — https://console.anthropic.com/ (paid; only if you use Claude vision)

Secrets never get committed to the repo — only the admin-password hash ships in site.json.