I'd like to help you set up an environment variable for your project. Environment variables are key-value pairs configured outside your source code that can change depending on the environment 1.

Could you please provide the following environment variable?

Great! Now that you've added the API_KEY environment variable to your Vercel project, let's create a simple example of how to use it in a Next.js application.

This example demonstrates how to securely use your API_KEY environment variable in a Next.js application:

1. The API route (app/api/hello/route.ts) accesses the environment variable on the server side using process.env.API_KEY. This is secure because environment variables are only accessible on the server.
2. The page component (app/page.tsx) provides a simple UI to test if your API key is configured correctly. When you click the "Check API Key" button, it makes a request to the API route.
3. For security, the API route only returns the length and first/last characters of your API key, not the full value.

Remember that environment variables that need to be accessible on the client side must be prefixed with NEXT_PUBLIC_ 1. Since API keys should generally be kept secure, we're only accessing it on the server side in this example.