Windows Environment Variable Manager (wem)

Windows Environment Variable Manager is a Windows-first tool for managing persistent User and Machine environment variables through the registry, with a CLI-first workflow today and safer, more structured workflows planned.

Why This Exists

Windows persistent environment variables are not just shell-local text files. They are registry-backed OS settings that affect how new processes inherit their environment. That creates a Windows-specific problem:

• programs are often launched from GUI surfaces like Explorer, shortcuts, and shells with different parent contexts
• work is spread across PowerShell, cmd.exe, Git Bash, Nushell, terminal multiplexers, IDE terminals, and AI-driven agents
• long values such as PATH are easy to break and hard to reason about

This is different from the common Linux workflow where shell startup files and single-shell process trees are often enough for day-to-day environment management.

This project exists to make Windows environment variable management feel more deliberate, inspectable, and eventually reversible.

What The Tool Does Today

• lists persistent environment variable names
• gets persistent variable values
• sets persistent variable values
• deletes persistent variable values
• supports user and machine scopes
• uses the Windows-backed .NET environment variable APIs
• provides CLI-first workflows with a future TUI direction

What The Tool Does Not Do Yet

• it does not update the current shell session automatically
• it does not retroactively update already-running processes
• it does not yet provide PATH-specific editing workflows
• it does not yet provide local version history or rollback
• the TUI entrypoint exists, but the TUI is not feature-complete yet

Current CLI Surface

Examples:

wem --help
wem list
wem list --scope machine
wem get PATH
wem get PATH --scope machine
wem set FOO Bar
wem set FOO Bar --scope machine
wem delete FOO
wem delete FOO --scope machine
wem tui

Scope rules:

• accepted values are user and machine
• omitted scope defaults to user
• machine mutation requires an elevated Administrator shell

Important Behavior Notes

• persisted User and Machine values are updated correctly
• the current shell session is not automatically refreshed
• already-running processes keep their existing environment blocks
• new processes may observe updated values only when launched from an updated parent context

Storage Direction

Planned local configuration and version-history data will live under %LOCALAPPDATA%\wem\.

Roadmaps

Detailed mini-specs live under roadmaps/:

• Roadmap Index
• PATH Operations
• Shell Session Integration
• Local Version History
• Terminal GUI

Status

This project is early-stage and CLI-first.

The current focus is establishing correct Windows behavior first, then adding safer PATH editing, local version history, shell-session integration, and a resilient TUI.