Contributors Guide: How to set up Tracecat Locally for Development

Tracecat is an all-in-one automation platform for security and IT engineers, offering greater flexibility than open-source alternatives like Tines. Interested in contributing to the project? Follow this simple guide to set it up locally on your machine for development! πŸŽ‰
Contributors Guide: How to set up Tracecat Locally for Development

Prerequisites

To get started, you will need to install the following:

  • Docker & Docker Compose
  • Openssl
  • Node.js: With pnpm package manager
  • Python: 3.12+ with uv package manager
  • just: used for running tasks defined in the Tracecat repo

Guide

  1. Download the official repo to your computer :
  1. Download Env Files :

Then do the following when prompted:

Setting up Dev Mode with Environment Files
Setting up Dev Mode with Environment Files
  1. Set up Python Virtual Environment:
  1. Install Dependencies
  1. Start Dev Docker Server:

πŸ’‘
Sometimes the first just dev has an error, but I find if I run it again after the initial setup, it works perfectly fine after this.

That's it! You should be able to visit localhost or 127.0.0.1 in you browser to see Tracecat running on your machine πŸŽ‰

Set Up Your Account

Now that Tracecat is up and running let's sign up and get using it! On the Tracecat UI (127.0.0.1 or localhost/), follow these steps to set up the first user (also the superuser!) "

Tracecat Home Page
Tracecat Login Page
Tracecat signup page

Hitting Create Account should take some time, behind the scenes this is setting up and creating your workspace, org and super user account. If you see this screen, there you have it!

You successfully set up Tracecat locally on your own computer and can start making your own workflows or contributions to the platform!! πŸŽ‰

Conclusion

Well, there you have it, your first step into contributing to the Tracecat project! In my next posts I will show you a tour of workflow development, how to create a custom integration, organization management and more!

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