Local Development
Run your entire stack locally with one command.
Starting a Dev Session
alien devThis is the all-in-one local workflow. It starts a local server, builds your app, and deploys it.
Every cloud resource gets a local equivalent:
| Cloud Resource | Local Equivalent |
|---|---|
| S3 / Cloud Storage / Blob Storage | Filesystem |
| DynamoDB / Firestore / Table Storage | SQLite (embedded database) |
| SQS / Pub/Sub / Service Bus | SQLite (persistent queue) |
| Workers / Daemons | Native process extracted from the built image |
| Containers | Docker container |
| Postgres | Embedded native Postgres |
| Vault | Plaintext local files |
No cloud credentials needed. No accounts. Docker is required only for builds and Container resources.
Server-Only Mode
If you want just the local server without the full build-deploy-watch cycle:
alien dev serverThen drive it manually with explicit commands:
alien dev release
alien dev deploy --name preview
alien dev deployments lsThis is useful when you want more control over the build-release-deploy cycle, or when integrating with other tools.
Agent-Friendly
For AI agents and automated tooling that need to read state programmatically:
alien dev --status-file .alien/dev-status.jsonThe status file is a JSON document that updates as the dev session progresses — no terminal output parsing required. Agents can poll this file to know when resources are ready, get endpoint URLs, and monitor health.