chroma-core/chroma · error · ValueError

The {self.api_key_env_var} environment variable is not set.

Error message

The {self.api_key_env_var} environment variable is not set.

What it means

Error "The {self.api_key_env_var} environment variable is not set." thrown in chroma-core/chroma.

Source

Thrown at chromadb/utils/embedding_functions/huggingface_embedding_function.py:50

        except ImportError:
            raise ValueError(
                "The httpx python package is not installed. Please install it with `pip install httpx`"
            )

        if api_key is not None:
            warnings.warn(
                "Direct api_key configuration will not be persisted. "
                "Please use environment variables via api_key_env_var for persistent storage.",
                DeprecationWarning,
            )
        if os.getenv("HUGGINGFACE_API_KEY") is not None:
            self.api_key_env_var = "HUGGINGFACE_API_KEY"
        else:
            self.api_key_env_var = api_key_env_var

        self.api_key = api_key or os.getenv(self.api_key_env_var)
        if not self.api_key:
            raise ValueError(
                f"The {self.api_key_env_var} environment variable is not set."
            )

        self.model_name = model_name

        self._api_url = f"https://api-inference.huggingface.co/pipeline/feature-extraction/{model_name}"
        self._session = httpx.Client()
        self._session.headers.update({"Authorization": f"Bearer {self.api_key}"})

    def __call__(self, input: Documents) -> Embeddings:
        """
        Get the embeddings for a list of texts.

        Args:
            input (Documents): A list of texts to get embeddings for.

        Returns:
            Embeddings: The embeddings for the texts.

View on GitHub (pinned to aecdd12c8a)

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at chromadb/utils/embedding_functions/huggingface_embedding_function.py:50 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of chroma-core/chroma@aecdd12c8a (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8e3411e414dbe98e. Report an issue: GitHub.