direnv deprecated

direnv and mise both change the environment when you enter a directory. Their shell hooks can disagree about which PATH entries to add, restore, or remove.

Unsupported integration

Using direnv with mise is unsupported. Compatibility issues are not considered mise bugs, and PRs for direnv compatibility are not accepted. The use mise integration is deprecated.

Do you need direnv?

For a project that uses direnv to set variables, load dotenv files, or activate a Python environment, mise has corresponding configuration:

Existing .envrc behavior	mise configuration
export NODE_ENV=development	[env] with NODE_ENV = "development"
Load a dotenv file	env._.file
Add bin to PATH	env._.path
Export values from a Bash script	env._.source
Activate a Python virtualenv	Python virtualenv configuration

For example:

mise.toml

[env]
NODE_ENV = "development"
_.file = ".env"
_.path = "bin"

This example assumes the project has a .env file. Remove that directive if it does not. See Environments for defaults, unsetting values, and sourcing scripts.

After moving the required behavior into mise.toml, remove the project's direnv integration, activate mise, and open a fresh shell to verify the environment. mise exec -- <command> can check project commands without depending on the interactive shell's current state.

mise inside of direnv (use mise in .envrc)

The following describes the deprecated setup for people maintaining or removing an existing integration. It gives direnv control of the exported environment and does not provide mise's full activation behavior.

The integration generates a direnv library function:

mkdir -p ~/.config/direnv/lib
mise direnv activate > ~/.config/direnv/lib/use_mise.sh

An .envrc then calls it as:

use mise

Keep the distinction between the shell function use_mise and direnv's use mise syntax. Existing projects may also load it from a parent .envrc with source_up, or from ~/.config/direnv/direnvrc.

If retaining this integration, avoid having both tools manage the same runtime or virtualenv. A common conflict is direnv's layout python alongside a Python version selected by mise. Changes to a .tool-versions file outside the .envrc directory may also fail to trigger a direnv refresh.

Shims provide another way to run mise-managed tools, but they do not reproduce all the features of mise activate or make mixed shell hooks a supported setup.