Those settings are indeed intended for “variables needed after clone, during build” which is when all other variables are useful and used. Those git related ones are the only ones in that exact situation of not being controllable via the toml file. Thanks for your suggestion - we’ll work with our documentation team on a way to make this more obvious in our docs! Could you point us in the right direction? Where would you have expected to find this mentioned? In the toml file doc you linked, or perhaps here? Build environment variables | Netlify Docs