Getting Started

The Evidential suite has a backend API server (FastAPI) and a frontend web-app (NextJS).

Note

Note: See our Reading List for links to documentation on our open-source tech stack.

Contributing from outside the team?

The clone commands below use the upstream repositories. If you're an external contributor, fork first and clone your fork instead — you won't have push access to the upstream repos.

Prerequisites

1. Install Task.

2. Install Docker.

3. Install Git LFS.

4. Install NodeJS version 22.

Backend

Follow the steps below to get a local development environment running.

1. Check out the https://github.com/agency-fund/evidential-be repository:

   gh repo clone agency-fund/evidential-be
   cd evidential-be
   

2. Install dependencies (Atlas, uv, Python dependencies) by running:

   git lfs install
   task install-dependencies
   

3. Run the unit tests:

   task test-airplane
   

4. Get familiar with the task runner. Most of the commands you will run are defined in Taskfile.yml. Run:

   task --list
   

5. Start the backend server:

   task start-airplane
   

   This will start the server at http://localhost:8000. It stores its state in a local Postgres instance, running in Docker, on localhost:5499.

6. Visit the local interactive OpenAPI docs page: http://localhost:8000/docs

7. Set up the prek git hooks in your local checkout:

   uv run prek install
   

Frontend

1. Check out the https://github.com/agency-fund/evidential-fe repository:

   gh repo clone agency-fund/evidential-fe
   cd evidential-fe
   

2. Switch to node version 22:

   nvm use 22
   

3. Start the frontend server:

   task start-airplane