i had not considered such an interpretation.
i expected "ci" to mean "get ready for a key value pair".

key-value pairs seem safe to me.
travis does not need to respect these kv pairs.
just make them available to the repo under test in case the repo knows what to do with them.

what about a command, a la `foo bar=baz`.
this seems dangerous to me.
it may have value.
as a travis user, i'd prefer to recognize a kv pair and possibly run commands based on the kv pair.
perhaps somebody with a different perspective can weigh in with an actual use case with embedded commands.