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Development vs Production: This setup is for development and testing only. For production deployment, use the Docker Compose or Kubernetes guides.

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Project Structure

The Speckle server is organized as a monorepo with the following key packages:
  • packages/server: Main API server (Node.js)
  • packages/frontend-2: Web interface (Vue.js)
  • packages/viewer: 3D viewer (Three.js)
  • packages/preview-service: Preview image generation
  • packages/webhook-service: Webhook processing
  • packages/fileimport-service: File import processing

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Prerequisites

Before setting up your development environment, ensure you have:
  • Git for version control
  • Node.js (check package.json engines field for version requirements)
  • Docker and Docker Compose for containerized services
  • GitHub SSH key (optional, for SSH-based cloning)

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Supported Platforms

Speckle server has been developed on Linux, Windows WSL2, and MacOS. It does not work on Windows without WSL2. On MacOS devices with Apple based chips (M2, M3 etc.) it is possible to run the server as described below, but building and running Dockerfiles takes a lot of time (due to emulation of an x86 platform).

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Setup Instructions

To run a barebones Speckle Server, you need to run:
  • the frontend-2 package (Vue.js web interface)
  • the server package (Node.js API server)
Optionally, to enable extra functionality, microservices should be run separately:
  • the preview-service package generates preview images for streams
  • the webhook-service package is responsible with calling the configured webhooks
  • the fileimport-service package parses and imports uploaded files into Speckle
1

Clone and setup repository

git clone git@github.com:specklesystems/speckle-server.git
cd speckle-server
corepack enable
yarn
yarn build
2

Start dependencies

yarn dev:docker:up
3

Configure environment files

cp packages/server/.env.example packages/server/.env
cp packages/server/.env.test-example packages/server/.env.test
cp packages/frontend-2/.env.example packages/frontend-2/.env
cp packages/fileimport-service/.env.example packages/fileimport-service/.env
cp packages/preview-service/.env.example packages/preview-service/.env
cp packages/webhook-service/.env.example packages/webhook-service/.env
cp packages/monitor-deployment/.env.example packages/monitor-deployment/.env
4

Start development server

yarn dev
5

Wait for the frontend to build

Wait for the Vue.js frontend to build, and you have a fully functional Speckle Server running at http://localhost:3000.
Don’t forget to set up the variables in the .env & .env.test files according to your deployment
In this deployment type, the Vue.js frontend app will listen by default on the local interface (not available over the network) on port 8080, but will have no knowledge about the server component, and thus should not be accessed directly. The Node.js server component will listen on the local interface (not available over the network) on port 3000, and will proxy the frontend requests to the Vue.js frontend component (as configured in .env file).

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Getting Help