agnes-the-ai-analyst/docs/local-development.md

Local Development

Single source of truth for working on Agnes against localhost. Covers the dev-mode auth bypass, mocked Google Workspace groups, what isn't mocked, and the safety rails that keep the dev shortcuts off production.

TL;DR

make local-dev

Then open http://localhost:8000. You land on /dashboard already logged in as dev@localhost (role admin) and your /profile shows two mocked Workspace groups. No login screen, no .env file, no SMTP, no GCP project — just code.

What make local-dev actually does:

• Stacks three Compose files: docker-compose.yml (base) + docker-compose.dev.yml (hot-reload + source bind mount) + docker-compose.local-dev.yml (LOCAL_DEV_MODE overlay).
• Seeds LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS with a sensible default (engineers + admins on example.com) so /profile is non-empty on first boot.
• Touches an empty .env if missing — Compose validates env_file: paths even for services that never start, and the local-dev overlay drops the env-file requirement for the services that do.

make local-dev-down stops the stack; make local-dev-logs tails it.

What LOCAL_DEV_MODE=1 actually bypasses

The local-dev overlay sets LOCAL_DEV_MODE=1, which flips four switches:

1. Auth bypass. app/auth/dependencies.py::get_current_user short-circuits to a seeded admin user (dev@localhost by default; override via LOCAL_DEV_USER_EMAIL) before any token check runs. Every protected route — REST and HTML — auto-authenticates.
2. Magic-link emails skip SMTP. When the email-link auth provider is exercised in dev, the link is logged to stderr and returned in the response body instead of sent over wire. No mail server, no inbox.
3. Secrets self-seed. JWT_SECRET_KEY and SESSION_SECRET auto-generate into /data/state/ on first boot if not provided. You don't need to manage them manually.
4. No .env requirement. The overlay declares env_file: [] on the affected services, so the project-level .env doesn't need to exist. Everything dev-relevant is inline in docker-compose.local-dev.yml.

A loud warning banner is logged at startup when LOCAL_DEV_MODE=1:

============================================================
LOCAL_DEV_MODE is ON — authentication is bypassed.
All requests auto-authenticate as: dev@localhost
LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS: mocking 2 group(s) into session: local-dev-engineers@example.com, local-dev-admins@example.com
NEVER enable this in a deployment reachable from the internet.
============================================================

If you don't see that banner at boot, dev mode isn't on — check LOCAL_DEV_MODE=1 made it into the container's env.

Mocking Google Workspace groups

/profile and any future group-aware code path read session.google_groups. In production that field gets populated by the OAuth callback (app/auth/providers/google.py) from a Cloud Identity searchTransitiveGroups call. In dev there's no OAuth round-trip, so the field stays empty unless we mock it.

LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS is a JSON array of objects matching the production shape:

export LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS='[{"id":"engineers@example.com","name":"Engineering"},{"id":"admins@example.com","name":"Admins"}]'

The values flow into session.google_groups on every dev-bypass request, so group-aware code sees something realistic. Same {id, name} shape the OAuth callback writes.

How make local-dev seeds it

scripts/run-local-dev.sh sets a default if you haven't already (engineers + admins on example.com), so first-boot is non-empty. Three ways to control it:

make local-dev                                          # default mock — engineers + admins
LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS='[{"id":"qa@x.com","name":"QA"}]' make local-dev   # custom mock
LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS= make local-dev                         # empty — exercise the no-groups path

Verifying the mock

Two checks:

1. Boot banner logs the parsed group IDs (or warns loudly if the JSON is malformed):

   LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS: mocking 2 group(s) into session: local-dev-engineers@example.com, local-dev-admins@example.com
   

   A typo (e.g. unbalanced bracket) shows up here — not silently on the first authenticated request.

2. /profile renders the mocked groups in a list. If you set LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS= (empty), you'll see "No Google groups available".

Edge case: clearing stale groups mid-session

If you previously had LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS set, then unset it and made a request, the dev-bypass path now writes [] into the session — same semantics as the production OAuth callback, which always rewrites session.google_groups on each login. You won't get stuck looking at stale mocked groups after toggling the env var.

What's NOT mocked

LOCAL_DEV_MODE is intentionally narrow. These still need real configuration if you exercise them:

• Cloud Identity API. No real call ever fires in dev. LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS populates session.google_groups directly without going through _fetch_google_groups. To debug the actual API call, use scripts/debug/probe_google_groups.py against a real OAuth token.
• Real OAuth round-trip. Google login button is hidden / no-op in dev mode. To test the full OAuth flow, follow docs/auth-google-oauth.md and unset LOCAL_DEV_MODE.
• Admin Workspace permissions. The mocked groups are not authoritative — they live only in your browser session. They don't grant any real access to anything outside Agnes; they let you exercise group-aware code paths inside the app.
• PAT (Personal Access Token) flow. PATs work normally in dev mode; the dev bypass only short-circuits cookie/session auth. Token-bearer requests still hit the JWT validation path.

Security model

LOCAL_DEV_MODE=1 is a footgun by design — every protected route auto-authenticates as admin without any check. The codebase has these rails to keep it from leaking into prod:

• docker-compose.local-dev.yml is a separate overlay, never stacked into docker-compose.prod.yml. Production deployments never see it.
• The startup banner is loud and unmissable — WARNING level, repeated 60-character separator. Anyone reading container logs at startup will spot it immediately.
• is_local_dev_mode() reads os.environ fresh on every call — no startup-time cache that could be poisoned.
• LOCAL_DEV_GROUPS is honored only inside the if is_local_dev_mode(): block in get_current_user. Setting it without LOCAL_DEV_MODE=1 does nothing.

If you ever see the dev banner in a real deployment's logs, treat it as a P0 incident: the auth boundary is gone.

Cross-links

• docs/auth-groups.md — production Google Workspace groups: GCP setup checklist, the security label gotcha, debugging the real Cloud Identity call.
• docs/auth-google-oauth.md — full Google OAuth setup for non-dev environments (client ID, scopes, redirect URIs).
• docs/QUICKSTART.md — first-time setup for a real (non-dev) instance.
• CLAUDE.md — repo-wide engineering conventions (changelog discipline, vendor-agnostic OSS rules, project structure).