This fixes issue #3934 where 'crewai chat' fails when the crew has
module-level LLM instantiation that requires OPENAI_API_KEY.
The issue occurred because 'crewai chat' imports the crew module directly
using __import__(), and any module-level code executes immediately during
import. At this point, the .env file hadn't been loaded yet, so
OPENAI_API_KEY was not available in the environment.
Changes:
- Load .env file in load_crew_and_name() before importing the crew module
- Use os.environ.setdefault() to avoid overriding existing env vars
- Add comprehensive tests covering:
- Loading crew with .env containing OPENAI_API_KEY
- Environment variable precedence (existing vars not overridden)
- Loading crew without .env file
Fixes#3934
Co-Authored-By: João <joao@crewai.com>
e0ee53b1b6