diff --git a/openapi-ts.config.ts b/openapi-ts.config.ts
index 31dcbc46..1d1c3a76 100644
--- a/openapi-ts.config.ts
+++ b/openapi-ts.config.ts
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+// This config runs in Node, outside Astro, so nothing has loaded `.env` yet. It must come
+// before the import below: `consts.ts` reads the environment as it is evaluated.
+import "dotenv/config";
+
 import { defineConfig } from "@hey-api/openapi-ts";
 import { defaultPlugins } from "@hey-api/openapi-ts";
 
diff --git a/src/utils/consts.ts b/src/utils/consts.ts
index d924359d..16f6b74f 100644
--- a/src/utils/consts.ts
+++ b/src/utils/consts.ts
@@ -1,9 +1,15 @@
-import dotenv from "dotenv";
-
-if (typeof process !== "undefined") {
-    dotenv.config();
-}
-
+/**
+ * Reads configuration from whichever environment this module ends up in.
+ *
+ * Nothing is loaded from disk here. This file travels into the browser bundle — components
+ * call `getDefaultCurrency()` and friends — and it also runs on Cloudflare Workers, where
+ * there is no filesystem to read a `.env` from. Calling `dotenv.config()` from here used to
+ * throw `process.cwd is not a function` in the browser, which killed hydration for every
+ * island that reached this module.
+ *
+ * Astro loads `.env` into `import.meta.env` on its own. The one caller that runs outside
+ * Astro is `openapi-ts.config.ts`, and it loads `.env` itself.
+ */
 let runtimeEnv: Record<string, string>;
 
 if (typeof import.meta !== "undefined" && import.meta.env) {