diff --git a/axon/config.py b/axon/config.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f9425
--- /dev/null
+++ b/axon/config.py
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+from pydantic_settings import BaseSettings
+
+
+class Settings(BaseSettings):
+    brave_api_key: str | None = None
+    serper_api_key: str | None = None
+    redis_url: str | None = "redis://localhost:6379"
+    api_keys: str | None = None
+    litellm_base_url: str = "http://localhost:4000"
+    litellm_api_key: str | None = None
+    synthesis_model: str = "claude-sonnet-4-6"
+    reranker_model: str = "BAAI/bge-reranker-v2-m3"
+    port: int = 8000
+    max_concurrent_scrapes: int = 10
+    scrape_timeout: int = 5
+    rate_limit_per_minute: int = 60
+    extract_timeout: int = 10
+    crawl_max_pages: int = 50
+    crawl_max_depth: int = 3
+    index_db_path: str = "axon_index.sqlite3"
+    enable_browser_fallback: bool = False
+
+    @property
+    def api_key_list(self) -> list[str]:
+        if not self.api_keys:
+            return []
+        return [k.strip() for k in self.api_keys.split(",") if k.strip()]
+
+    model_config = {"env_file": ".env", "extra": "ignore"}
+
+
+settings = Settings()