Developer Quickstart
Thanks for contributing to UIUC.chat ❤️
Start here
Set up Infiscal for Environment Variables
You must setup an account before continuing, for our secrets service Infisical. Confirm you can login here: https://env.ncsa.ai/
Instead of sharing .env
files manually, we use Infiscal as a central password manager for devs. We use its CLI and web interface.
See the CLI install docs for Linux/Windows instructions. Or the CLI usage docs.
Where are my .env
variables?
.env
variables?If it's running on localhost
, the env vars come from Infisical, our shared secrets manager. You can add new env vars at env.ncsa.ai.
If it's in production, or any cloud service, the env vars are stored directly in that cloud service. Those include Vercel, Railway, Beam.cloud and more. You can edit env vars in those services, just be careful.
Frontend Setup
Frontend repo: https://github.com/CAII-NCSA/uiuc-chat-frontend
(1/2) Install dev dependencies
follow these instructions in order; it's tested to work brilliantly.
Use Node version 18.xx
LTS
Install dev dependencies
(2/2) Set up secrets
Last step: start dev server!
You will need to run the below command once for the initial setup
Run the app on your local machine
npm run dev
is the most important command you'll use every dev session.
Backend Setup
Backend repo: https://github.com/UIUC-Chatbot/ai-ta-backend
(1/2) Install dev dependencies
Use a python virtual environment, here I'll use conda
.
Use python 3.10.
(2/2) Set up secrets
You must setup an account before continuing, for our secrets service Infisical. Confirm you can login here: https://env.ncsa.ai/
Also make sure to install Infiscal in your local machine as mentioned above
Last step: start dev server!
Now you can write new endpoints in ai-ta-backend/main.py
and call them using Postman.
Thanks! For any questions at all just email me (kvday2@illinois.edu). I'm friendly, promise.
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