[cscheid]

Closes #1131.

Code cells now see the environment Quarto 1 gives them:

• QUARTO_PROJECT_ROOT, QUARTO_DOCUMENT_PATH, QUARTO_DOCUMENT_FILE
• QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO: path to a JSON file with document-path and the resolved six-bin format (identifier, execute, render, pandoc, language, metadata), including format.render.brand.{light,dark}
• QUARTO_FIG_WIDTH, QUARTO_FIG_HEIGHT, QUARTO_FIG_DPI, QUARTO_FIG_FORMAT

Design

q2 never mutates its own process environment. The values are computed once per document in EngineExecutionStage (ExecutionContext.execute_env) and each engine delivers them:

• knitr: Command::envs on the per-document R process.
• Jupyter: kernels are shared by every document of a project (sessions keyed by kernel and directory), so spawn-time env cannot carry per-document values. A silent execute_request (store_history: false, silent: true) sets them inside the kernel before the document's first cell, for Python, R and Julia kernels. This is how Quarto 1 already sets QUARTO_FIG_*.
• The execute-info file is written into the document's temp dir, only when code runs.

engine/execute_info.rs ports Q1's metadataAsFormat. Its key lists are tested against ts-packages/quarto-api/src/config/index.ts, so the file and the Node engine host can't drift apart. quarto-sass gains resolve_brand_modes, which returns the dark half only when the brand defines dark values.

Cost

Measured with the new QUARTO_PERF_STATS=1 gauge (perf.execute-info), debug build:

Project	Bytes	Build + write
claude-notes website	6,359	0.24 ms
docs website	19,406	0.35 ms
Quarto 1, lone document	6,513

The cost is per document that executes code, small next to starting an engine. Most of the docs size is the website sidebar config, which Quarto 1 includes too.

Differences from Quarto 1

These are listed in the new docs page docs/guides/authoring/execution-context.qmd:

• brand.dark is present whenever the brand defines dark values.
• Each brand mode has data and brandDir, not Q1's whole internal Brand object.
• QUARTO_FIG_* report q2's figure defaults (png, 96 dpi), not Q1's HTML retina.
• The julia and marimo engines don't receive the variables yet (bd-x3h4zjhl).

Tests

• Unit tests in engine/execute_info.rs: partition, key-list parity, fig env, paths, brand, per-language setup code with escaping.
• quarto-sass brand-mode tests.
• execute_env_cli_e2e: drives q2 render with a knitr document in a subdirectory with a light/dark brand, and two Jupyter documents on one shared kernel, each seeing its own document. Skips without R+knitr or a python3 kernel.
• cargo nextest run -p quarto-core -p quarto-sass -p quarto-brand -p quarto: 9,152 of 9,153 pass. The one failure is capture_classifies_pieces, which also fails on main with newer rlang (bd-54odm3rz).
• Clippy with -D warnings, cargo xtask lint, and npm run build:wasm pass.
• The Windows cross-check is not possible for these crates (C build scripts). The new code uses no platform-specific APIs.

No snapshot files changed.

Found along the way (separate strands, not fixed here)

• bd-i7yz08uh (P1): parallel project renders interleave cells of different documents on one shared Jupyter kernel. Reproduced with QUARTO_JOBS=2. The new Jupyter test runs with QUARTO_JOBS=1 until it is fixed.
• bd-08hfh3ut (P1): a project-level brand: resolves against the document directory once code runs, for a document in a subdirectory. This is pre-existing on main.

Triage record: claude-notes/issue-reports/1131/triage.md. Plan and measurements: claude-notes/plans/2026-11-10-execute-environment.md.

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[cscheid]

We're going to merge this to increase Quarto 1 compatibility, but I'll note for the record that this is a feature we probably will deprecate in the future (we want to minimize our dependence on filesystems for access to information because of a variety of reasons).

[mcanouil]

We're going to merge this to increase Quarto 1 compatibility, but I'll note for the record that this is a feature we probably will deprecate in the future (we want to minimize our dependence on filesystems for access to information because of a variety of reasons).

FWIW, I might be the only one using that feature at the moment, mostly to gain access to metadata otherwise not available to code cells / engines, e.g., brand.yml and project options.

edit: it seems plotnine (Python), flextable (R) are using it.
It is also in the Quarto book.

• https://github.com/search?q=QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO&type=code