# Contributing (/docs/reference/contributing)



This guide is for working on the [llama-dash application](https://github.com/ndom91/llama-dash). For a production deployment without Docker, see [Manual setup](/docs/getting-started/manual-setup).

## Development setup [#development-setup]

Install Node 24+, [pnpm](https://pnpm.io), Git, and any native build tools required by `better-sqlite3`. Run a reachable [llama-swap](https://github.com/mostlygeek/llama-swap) instance for inference and model management.

```bash
git clone https://github.com/ndom91/llama-dash.git
cd llama-dash
cp .env.example .env
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
```

Edit `.env` and set `INFERENCE_BASE_URL` to your instance, such as `http://localhost:8080`; the example hostname is for Docker Compose. Set `BETTER_AUTH_SECRET` to the output of `openssl rand -base64 33`. Leave `BETTER_AUTH_URL` empty for local development, or set it to `http://localhost:5173` when testing passkeys locally. Set `INFERENCE_CONFIG_FILE` to the absolute path of your llama-swap `config.yaml` to use the config editor, or clear the Docker-specific example value.

Start the development server:

```bash
pnpm dev
```

Open `http://localhost:5173`. The server creates the default SQLite database at `data/dash.db` and applies migrations at startup. You can also run `pnpm db:migrate` manually. Configuration options are documented in [Environment variables](/docs/reference/environment-variables).

## Checks [#checks]

Before submitting changes, run the project's formatter, linter, typecheck, and tests:

```bash
pnpm lint:fix
pnpm format:fix
pnpm typecheck
pnpm test
```

Follow the repository's `AGENTS.md` for architecture, style, and contribution conventions.