As detailed in several other threads, there are three options.
- store your API key in a local file, then read it back in at the beginning of a chat-gpt program
- set the API key into your local environment, then read it back in at the beginning of a chat-gpt program
- assign the API key as a string directly in your chat-gpt program
You can’t just try to read it either from a file or from the environment if you didn’t explicitly put it there first. If you directly assign it from a string, you don’t need the dotenv stuff at all. Below I’ll link a thread with more detail that could have been found using forum search on this error.
Here’s one, there are many