Developer Local Setup

This setup is intended for developers who want to actively work on or extend the platform. Each service is run separately, allowing you to make changes and iterate quickly without rebuilding Docker images.

The platform is distributed under the MIT licence, so you are free to build upon and extend it.

Frontend

The frontend is a React + TypeScript application. Start it in development mode with:

npm run dev

Make sure the VITE_BACKEND_URL environment variable is set to point at your running backend instance, for example:

VITE_BACKEND_URL=http://localhost:8000

Backend

The backend is a Django application managed with uv. Start the development server with:

uv run python manage.py runserver

This command installs dependencies from pyproject.toml and uv.lock before launching the server. Key configuration notes:

• ALLOWED_HOSTS in settings.py should include your frontend URL
• By default, SQLite is used as the local database. If a DATABASE_URL environment variable is provided, the application connects to that instead
• S3 storage support can be enabled by uncommenting the relevant section in settings.py and filling in the variables from .env.example

Redis

On macOS, Redis can be managed via Homebrew:

brew services start redis
brew services stop redis

On other platforms, refer to the official Redis documentation.

Celery Worker

Celery handles background task processing. Start a worker with:

celery -A config worker -l INFO

Celery automatically discovers tasks from the apps listed in INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py. The Redis broker URL defaults to redis://localhost:6379/0 if no REDIS_URL environment variable is set.

Flower Monitoring (Optional)

You can start the Flower monitoring interface to inspect task queues and worker status:

celery -A config flower --port=5555

Flower will be accessible at http://localhost:5555.

Services Summary

Service	Command	Default URL
Frontend	npm run dev	http://localhost:5173
Backend	uv run python manage.py runserver	http://localhost:8000
Redis	brew services start redis	localhost:6379
Celery	celery -A config worker -l INFO	—
Flower	celery -A config flower --port=5555	http://localhost:5555