---
title: Frontend development environment
sidebar_label: Frontend development
tags:
    - development
    - contributor
    - frontend
    - docker
---

import NPMInstallScriptsAdmonition from "./\_npm-install-scripts-admonition.mdx";

If you're focusing solely on frontend development, you can create a minimal development environment using Docker and Node.js. This setup allows you to make and preview changes to the frontend in real-time, without needing to interact with the backend.

### Prerequisites

- [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en) (24 or later)
- [Docker](https://www.docker.com/) (Latest Community Edition or Docker Desktop)
- [Docker Compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/) (Compose v2)
- [Make](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/) (3 or later)

### Instructions

1. Clone the Git repo to your development machine and navigate to the authentik directory.

    ```shell
    git clone https://github.com/goauthentik/authentik
    cd authentik
    ```

2. Run the following to create a `.env` file in the `lifecycle/container` directory of the repository to configure the Docker Compose environment.

    ```shell
    echo "PG_PASS=$(openssl rand -base64 36 | tr -d '\n')" >> ./lifecycle/container/.env
    echo "AUTHENTIK_SECRET_KEY=$(openssl rand -base64 60 | tr -d '\n')" >> ./lifecycle/container/.env
    echo "AUTHENTIK_IMAGE=ghcr.io/goauthentik/dev-server" >> ./lifecycle/container/.env
    echo "AUTHENTIK_TAG=gh-next" >> ./lifecycle/container/.env
    echo "AUTHENTIK_OUTPOSTS__CONTAINER_IMAGE_BASE=ghcr.io/goauthentik/dev-%(type)s:gh-next" >> ./lifecycle/container/.env
    echo "AUTHENTIK_LOG_LEVEL=debug" >> ./lifecycle/container/.env
    echo 'GIT_BUILD_HASH="dev"' >> ./lifecycle/container/.env
    ```

3. Create a Docker Compose override file (`compose.override.yml`) in the root of the repository. This will override the volume configurations for the local configuration file (`local.env.yml`) and mount the directory for the frontend code (`web`) into the docker containers. Docker will automatically mount the web files generated by the build process. The `local.env.yml` mount is optional, but allows you to override the default configuration.

    ```yaml title="compose.override.yml"
    services:
        server:
            volumes:
                - ${PWD}/web:/web
                - ${PWD}/local.env.yml:/local.env.yml
    ```

4. From the repository root, run the frontend build script. This will install the npm packages needed to run the frontend project and start the project in watch mode.

    ```shell
    make node-install
    make web-watch
    ```

    <NPMInstallScriptsAdmonition />

5. In a new terminal, navigate to the cloned repository root and start the backend containers with Docker Compose.

    ```shell
    docker compose -f lifecycle/container/compose.yml -f compose.override.yml up -d
    ```

You can now access authentik on http://localhost:9000 (or https://localhost:9443).
