authentik/website/developer-docs/frontend-only-dev-environment.md

title
Frontend-only development environment

If you want to only make changes on the UI, you don't need a backend running from source. You can user the docker-compose install with a few customizations.

Prerequisites

• Node (any recent version should work, we use 16.x to build)
• Make (again, any recent version should work)
• Docker and docker-compose

Instructions

1. Clone the git repo from https://github.com/goauthentik/authentik

2. In the cloned repository, follow the docker-compose installation instructions here

3. Add the following entry to your .env file:

   AUTHENTIK_IMAGE=beryju.org/authentik/server
   AUTHENTIK_TAG=gh-next
   AUTHENTIK_OUTPOSTS__DOCKER_IMAGE_BASE=beryju.org/authentik/outpost-%(type)s:gh-next
   

   This will cause authentik to use the beta images.

4. Create a local.env.yml file to tell authentik to use local files instead of the bundled ones:

   log_level: debug
   web:
     load_local_files: true
   

5. Add this volume mapping to your compose file

   version: '3.2'
   
   services:
     # [...]
     server:
       # [...]
       volumes:
         - ./web:/web
         - ./local.env.yml:/local.env.yml
   

   This makes the local web files and the config file available to the authentik server.

6. Run docker-compose up -d to apply those changes to your containers.

7. Run make gen-web in the project root directory to generate the API Client used by the web interfaces

8. cd web

9. Run npm i and then npm run watch to start the build process.

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

You might also want to complete the initial setup under /if/flow/initial-setup/.