diff --git a/.env.example b/.env.example
index ce81892..e12cb6c 100644
--- a/.env.example
+++ b/.env.example
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
+ENVIRONMENT=
 DATABASE_URL=
diff --git a/backend/poetry.lock b/backend/poetry.lock
index d372676..3e96d31 100644
--- a/backend/poetry.lock
+++ b/backend/poetry.lock
@@ -270,6 +270,20 @@ files = [
 [package.dependencies]
 typing-extensions = ">=4.6.0,<4.7.0 || >4.7.0"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "python-dotenv"
+version = "1.0.1"
+description = "Read key-value pairs from a .env file and set them as environment variables"
+optional = false
+python-versions = ">=3.8"
+files = [
+    {file = "python-dotenv-1.0.1.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:e324ee90a023d808f1959c46bcbc04446a10ced277783dc6ee09987c37ec10ca"},
+    {file = "python_dotenv-1.0.1-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:f7b63ef50f1b690dddf550d03497b66d609393b40b564ed0d674909a68ebf16a"},
+]
+
+[package.extras]
+cli = ["click (>=5.0)"]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "sniffio"
 version = "1.3.1"
@@ -326,4 +340,4 @@ h11 = ">=0.9.0,<1"
 [metadata]
 lock-version = "2.0"
 python-versions = "^3.12"
-content-hash = "3fd0f47d58a196af7c7b0cd76911d5ab532321f1bcc15361b69f04b03440078a"
+content-hash = "d747123bdadf7b4b0f06db89478069a787f1b3b8599ea2c9ec31fa6d699a475e"
diff --git a/backend/pyproject.toml b/backend/pyproject.toml
index 3ed3af0..5033f83 100644
--- a/backend/pyproject.toml
+++ b/backend/pyproject.toml
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ start = "linkpulse.main"
 python = "^3.12"
 fastapi = "0.100"
 Hypercorn = "0.14.4"
+python-dotenv = "^1.0.1"
 
 
 [build-system]