diff --git a/.env.example b/.env.example
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..074ecd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.env.example
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+# REDCap API credentials:
+REDCAP_API_URL=https://redcap.example.edu/api/
+REDCAP_API_KEY=replace-with-your-api-token
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 5a1ded8..cb95f2a 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -31,6 +31,25 @@ To install the bleeding edge version from the github repo, use the following
 $ pip install -e git+https://github.com/redcap-tools/PyCap.git#egg=PyCap
 ```
 
+## Quickstart
+
+1. Copy `.env.example` to `.env` and update the values with your REDCap endpoint and API token.
+2. Install [`python-dotenv`](https://pypi.org/project/python-dotenv/) with `pip install python-dotenv` (or add it to your Poetry environment).
+
+Then load your credentials and connect:
+
+```python
+from dotenv import load_dotenv
+import os
+from redcap import Project
+
+load_dotenv()  # reads .env from the project root
+
+api_url = os.environ["REDCAP_API_URL"]
+api_key = os.environ["REDCAP_API_KEY"]
+project = Project(api_url, api_key)
+```
+
 ## Documentation
 
 Canonical documentation and usage examples can be found [here](https://redcap-tools.github.io/PyCap/).
diff --git a/docs/index.md b/docs/index.md
index ab5945e..5324f3f 100644
--- a/docs/index.md
+++ b/docs/index.md
@@ -16,6 +16,13 @@ If you want to load REDCap data into [`pandas`](https://pandas.pydata.org/) data
 $ pip install PyCap[all]
 ```
 
+For secure credential management, install [`python-dotenv`](https://pypi.org/project/python-dotenv/) (`pip install python-dotenv`) and create a `.env` file in your project root with your REDCap credentials:
+
+```dotenv
+REDCAP_API_URL=https://redcap.example.edu/api/
+REDCAP_API_KEY=YourSuperSecretAPIKeyHere
+```
+
 To install the bleeding edge version from the github repo, use the following
 
 ```sh
diff --git a/docs/quickstart.md b/docs/quickstart.md
index ab8f79b..64a132f 100644
--- a/docs/quickstart.md
+++ b/docs/quickstart.md
@@ -2,11 +2,24 @@
 
 PyCap makes it very simple to interact with the data stored in your REDCap projects
 
+> First, install python-dotenv (`pip install python-dotenv` or `poetry add python-dotenv`) and create a `.env` file in your project root with your REDCap credentials:
+
+```dotenv
+REDCAP_API_URL=https://redcap.example.edu/api/
+REDCAP_API_KEY=SomeSuperSecretAPIKeyThatNobodyElseShouldHave
+```
+
+Then update your code to load the values from the environment:
+
 ```python
+from dotenv import load_dotenv
+import os
 from redcap import Project
 
-api_url = 'https://redcap.example.edu/api/'
-api_key = 'SomeSuperSecretAPIKeyThatNobodyElseShouldHave'
+load_dotenv()  # Load variables from .env file
+
+api_url = os.getenv('REDCAP_API_URL')
+api_key = os.getenv('REDCAP_API_KEY')
 project = Project(api_url, api_key)
 ```