Local dev runs (`/tmp/molecule-server` after `go build`) used to 401 on
/workspaces the moment the DB had any workspace token in it: the binary
inherited a bare shell env with no MOLECULE_ENV, so AdminAuth's dev
fail-open branch (gated on MOLECULE_ENV=development) didn't fire.
The repo's .env already has MOLECULE_ENV=development plus DATABASE_URL,
REDIS_URL, ADMIN_TOKEN=, etc. Until now you had to `set -a && source
.env` in the launching shell — a paper cut, but worse, it's a paper
cut in EVERY automated dev workflow (IDE run configs, integration
test harnesses, the smoke-test loop in this branch's manual testing).
Fix: cmd/server now walks upward from CWD looking for a .env (capped
at 6 levels) and merges KEY=VALUE pairs into os.Environ before any
other code reads env. Already-set vars win over file values, so
docker run -e / CI exports / `KEY=val ./binary` still dominate — only
unset keys get filled in.
Why no godotenv dep: the format we use is plain KEY=VALUE with `#`
comments, no interpolation, no quoting (verified against the live
.env: 49 kv lines, zero references to ${...} or `export`). A 30-line
parser is auditable and avoids supply-chain surface.
Why it's safe in production: Dockerfile doesn't COPY .env into the
image and .env is gitignored, so prod containers have no .env on
disk to load — the function's findDotEnv() loop finds nothing and
returns silently. If an operator deliberately drops one in, the
existing-env-wins rule means container-injected env still dominates.
Verified by booting `env -i HOME=$HOME PATH=$PATH /tmp/molecule-server`
from the repo root with a stripped env: log shows
".env: /Users/.../molecule-core/.env — loaded 49, 0 already set" and
/workspaces returns 200 instead of 401.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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