Environment state

Environment state lets a deployment or runbook run save key/value pairs scoped to the combination of project, environment, and optionally a tenant. Later deployments and runbook runs for the same project and environment can then read those values back.

Environment state is useful in scenarios where a value produced during one run needs to be reused later. A common example is provisioning and deprovisioning ephemeral environments. A provisioning runbook might create a Kubernetes namespace or an application URL that later deployments and the deprovisioning runbook depend on. Recording each value as environment state means Octopus stores it once, so every later run reads it directly instead of re-deriving the value.

Each state entry is scoped to project, environment, and optionally a tenant, so state isn’t shared with other projects, environments, or tenants. Setting an entry with a key that already exists for the same project, environment, and tenant overwrites the previous value.

Setting environment state

Set state from a PowerShell or Bash script step using the wrapper functions Octopus provides.

Set-EnvironmentState -Key "namespace" -Value "webstore-pr-482"

set_environmentstate "namespace" "webstore-pr-482"

Sensitive values

Mark a value as sensitive to store it encrypted at rest and mask it in task logs. Add the -Sensitive switch in PowerShell, or -sensitive as the third argument in Bash.

Set-EnvironmentState -Key "connectionString" -Value "Server=db;Password=s3cret" -Sensitive

set_environmentstate "connectionString" "Server=db;Password=s3cret" -sensitive

Using environment state

Octopus makes each state entry available as a variable named Octopus.Environment.State[key] in later deployment or runbook run, where key is the name you set.

Read it from a script:

$namespace = $OctopusParameters["Octopus.Environment.State[namespace]"]

namespace=$(get_octopusvariable "Octopus.Environment.State[namespace]")

Setting an environment URL

An environment URL is a type of environment state, but gets first-class support in Octopus. It is stored like any other environment state, and surfaced as a clickable link in the Octopus Web Portal and available from the API.

Set a URL with the Set-EnvironmentUrl (PowerShell) or set_environmenturl (Bash) function. The first argument is the key that names the URL, and the second is the URL itself.

Set-EnvironmentUrl -Key "Store front" -Url "https://pr-123.example.com"

set_environmenturl "Store front" "https://pr-123.example.com"

URLs set this way show as clickable links on the Ephemeral Environments in the project, so anyone reviewing the environment can open the running app.

Getting URLs from the API

You can fetch the environment URLs from the API, which is useful for AI agents and scripts that need a link to the running app without reading the task log. Add an optional tenantId query parameter for tenanted runs.

GET /api/spaces/{spaceId}/projects/{projectId}/environments/{environmentId}/urls

The response is an array of name and URL pairs:

[
  { "Name": "Store front", "Url": "https://pr-123.example.com" }
]

Availability

Environment state is rolling out to Octopus Cloud, and will be available to self-hosted customers from version 2026.3.

Learn more

• Ephemeral environments
• Runbooks
• System variables