From 92801b91563d6d201f7ef0da40f26d0035b5d26c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: TheAchiever6823 <61914223+ShawnMadadha@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Mon, 18 May 2026 00:55:29 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] [shawn] fix: load backend/.env at startup so Telegram
 listener gets API creds in dev

---
 backend/main.py | 11 +++++++++++
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+)

diff --git a/backend/main.py b/backend/main.py
index 822e0fbd..2d1d458d 100644
--- a/backend/main.py
+++ b/backend/main.py
@@ -2,8 +2,19 @@ import asyncio
 import html
 import logging
 import os
+from pathlib import Path
 from uuid import uuid4
 
+# Load backend/.env before any module reads os.environ. Production builds
+# (DMG/EXE) get env vars injected by Electron at spawn so this is a no-op
+# there. In dev mode (`bash run.sh`) this is the only thing pulling .env
+# values into the process — OPENSWARM_TELEGRAM_API_ID, GOOGLE_OAUTH_*, etc.
+try:
+    from dotenv import load_dotenv as _load_dotenv
+    _load_dotenv(Path(__file__).parent / ".env")
+except Exception:  # noqa: BLE001
+    pass
+
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 from fastapi.responses import JSONResponse, HTMLResponse