Managing environments in elevenlabs is a nightmare

[pauksztello]

We’re trying to integrate ElevenLabs agents into our platform, which is built on Next.js. We have production, staging, and local environments for each developer. Trying out ElevenLabs was nice - the SDK is solid, but the issues started when we tried implementing multiple environments.

The struggles we’re facing:
1. No way to define environments or manage variables/secrets per environment.
2. Webhooks don’t support variables, so we need to create a new webhook for every environment.
3. Tools are a nightmare—there’s no secure way to pass path params. You end up needing to create a separate copy of each tool per environment just to manage secrets/paths.
4. The CLI is buggy, poorly documented, and doesn’t provide much value.

My suggestions to greatly improve the developer experience:
1. Add proper environment management.
2. Support dynamic variables in webhooks.
3. Allow passing secrets/sensitive configs when signing URLs instead of setting them from the client.
4. Invest in making the CLI truly useful. Right now, it’s buggy. For example: fetching agents with tools gives you an invalid config - then syncing fails because it says you can’t use tool IDs and tools together.

Just wanted to get my frustration out. On the bright side, integrating with Next.js was a charm.

[PaulAsjes]

Hi there, thanks for the feedback. Few things I'd like to get more info on:

No way to define environments or manage variables/secrets per environment.

Can you elaborate here? Is it that you're looking for essentially a staging/test environment within ElevenLabs that comes with test mode API keys? Or are you saying that it's tough to make the distinction on your end since you only have the one API key?

Webhooks don’t support variables, so we need to create a new webhook for every environment.

Can you also go a little deeper here? I'd argue that needing a new webhook per environment is a feature rather than a bug as you don't want your staging data mixed in with production.

Tools are a nightmare—there’s no secure way to pass path params. You end up needing to create a separate copy of each tool per environment just to manage secrets/paths.

It would be useful to understand what kind of tooling you're building here. Are you talking specifically about ConvAI client/server tools?

The CLI is buggy, poorly documented, and doesn’t provide much value

The CLI is relatively new and we're still working on the functionality. If you're finding issues we'd appreciate it if you open up a new issue in the packages repo.

Add proper environment management.

Ideally how would this look/work for you?

Support dynamic variables in webhooks.

Can you provide a use case or scenario here? I want to make sure I understand exactly what you're asking for.

Allow passing secrets/sensitive configs when signing URLs instead of setting them from the client.

Why would you want this to be managed on the ElevenLabs side? I'm not sure if ElevenLabs should be the one holding your secrets.

Invest in making the CLI truly useful. Right now, it’s buggy. For example: fetching agents with tools gives you an invalid config - then syncing fails because it says you can’t use tool IDs and tools together.

Will pass this along to the team, but it would be super helpful if you opened up issues on the packages repo.

Thanks again for the detailed feedback!

[pauksztello]

Thanks a lot for the fast response. Next time I’ll make sure to open issues on the packages repo directly.

It would be useful to understand what kind of tooling you're building here. Are you talking specifically about ConvAI client/server tools?

Our Setup / Context
• We’re running a Next.js app in a large monorepo that also exposes routes for server tools.
• We maintain multiple environments: production, staging, and local development. That means at least 3 different URLs for both tools and webhooks.

Onboarding a new dev currently requires:
1. Copying an agent.
2. Creating new tools for that agent that point to local server endpoints.
3. Creating a new webhook pointing to the local server.

This creates a lot of overhead.

Addressing the Points

No way to define environments or manage variables/secrets per environment.

The issue is that we can’t reuse the same agent across environments. Right now, everything has to be duplicated, which is fragile and slows down onboarding. Ideally, I’d just pick an environment (prod, staging, dev, or even custom) and the agent + tools would resolve the correct env variables automatically instead of me having to copy them.

Webhooks don’t support variables, so we need to create a new webhook for every environment.

In our case, we’d want webhook URLs to resolve based on environment. Stripe’s CLI is a good example: it lets you run a local listener that forwards events to your dev machine. Something like that would make life much easier.

There’s no secure way to pass path params…

We can pass path params from the client, but it’s not safe. A malicious client could point a tool to their own server, and then when the agent calls the tool it could send malicious requests. That’s why we’d prefer environment-based secrets + URL management inside ElevenLabs rather than relying on user-provided params.

Proper environment management.

I don’t think I’m qualified to design the perfect solution 😅, but just the ability to choose an environment (dev/prod/custom) and have tools + webhooks resolve env variables would already solve most of our struggles.

Can you also go a little deeper here? I'd argue that needing a new webhook per environment is a feature rather than a bug as you don't want your staging data mixed in with production.

When running locally, we’d want webhooks forwarded to a developer’s machine. For example, if I’m using a local Stripe CLI tunnel, I’d want ElevenLabs to dynamically point events to that local listener without having to duplicate agents + webhooks.

Why would you want this to be managed on the ElevenLabs side? I'm not sure if ElevenLabs should be the one holding your secrets.

I need to have secrets in ElevenLabs too authenticate ConvAI tool calls with our server. Would love to have them split by envs.