Dev Setup

Prerequisites

Requirement	Version	Install
Python	3.11+	python.org
Node.js	20+	nodejs.org
pnpm	9+	`npm install -g pnpm`
Git	any	git-scm.com

Clone and install

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/snippbot/snippbot.git
cd snippbot

Create a Python virtual environment

python3.11 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate   # macOS/Linux
# .venv\Scripts\activate    # Windows

Install Python packages in editable mode

pip install -e packages/core
pip install -e packages/local
pip install -e packages/cli

Or with Make:

make install-dev

Install UI dependencies

cd packages/ui && pnpm install && cd ../..
# Or:
make install-ui

Configure your API key

snippbot config set anthropic_api_key sk-ant-your-key

Start the dev servers
Terminal window
```
make dev
```
This runs both the backend daemon (with auto-reload) and the UI dev server (with hot-reload).

Dev server URLs

Service	URL	Description
UI (Vite)	http://localhost:5173	React frontend with hot-reload
API (daemon)	http://localhost:18781	Python backend
Docs	http://localhost:4321	`make docs-dev`

The UI dev server proxies /api requests to the backend automatically.

Individual commands

make dev-local     # Backend only (auto-reload)
make dev-ui        # UI only (Vite hot-reload)
make docs-dev      # Docs site (Starlight)

Makefile targets

make install       # Install all dependencies
make dev           # Run all dev servers
make build         # Build all packages
make test          # Run all tests
make lint          # Run linters (ruff, mypy, ESLint)
make lint-fix      # Auto-fix linting issues
make format        # Format code
make clean         # Remove build artifacts
make docs-dev      # Start docs dev server
make docs-build    # Build static docs site

Package structure

packages/
├── core/      → snippbot_core      Shared business logic
├── local/     → snippbot           Self-hosted daemon + API server
├── cli/       → snippbot_cli       CLI commands
├── ui/        → (React)            Web frontend (bundled into local)
├── docs/      → (Astro Starlight)  This documentation site
└── device/    → snippbot_device    Remote device agent

Docs development

To work on this documentation site:

make docs-dev      # Start at http://localhost:4321
make docs-build    # Build static output
make docs-preview  # Preview built output

Add content by creating .mdx files in packages/docs/src/content/docs/. The file path becomes the URL slug.