Configuration and Environment Variables

Prefactor TypeScript SDK / configuration

Configuration and Environment Variables

SDK configuration can be provided in code, through environment variables, or as a combination of both. Programmatic values take precedence, while environment variables provide deployment-friendly defaults. This pattern allows local development and production deployments to share the same initialization path with minimal branching.

Core runtime controls include:

PREFACTOR_TRANSPORT: selects the transport implementation used by SDK init/config creation logic (currently http from the transport selection path). Default is http when unset. If you provide transportType programmatically, that value takes precedence over PREFACTOR_TRANSPORT.
PREFACTOR_SAMPLE_RATE: sets trace sampling from 0 to 1.
PREFACTOR_CAPTURE_INPUTS and PREFACTOR_CAPTURE_OUTPUTS: control whether input and output payloads are recorded.
PREFACTOR_MAX_INPUT_LENGTH and PREFACTOR_MAX_OUTPUT_LENGTH: limit serialized payload sizes to keep telemetry bounded.
PREFACTOR_LOG_LEVEL: controls SDK log verbosity (debug, info, warn, error) as consumed by the logger configuration. Default is info when unset or invalid. Unlike tracing config fields, log level is not part of the main Config object, so there is no init config override for it; it is driven by logging configuration/environment handling.
PREFACTOR_API_URL and PREFACTOR_API_TOKEN: configure HTTP transport connection, with optional identifiers such as PREFACTOR_AGENT_ID, PREFACTOR_AGENT_NAME, and PREFACTOR_AGENT_IDENTIFIER to label agent instances.

Retry behavior can also be tuned for network conditions through HTTP config fields like maxRetries, initialRetryDelay, maxRetryDelay, and retryMultiplier, or via PREFACTOR_RETRY_ON_STATUS_CODES for status-code matching. In most applications, the default retry profile is sufficient, so the best practice is to begin with defaults, observe behavior, and only adjust values when operational data shows a clear need.