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First Run

With dependencies installed and your .env configured, you're ready to start Pipelit.

Start Redis

Ensure Redis 8.0+ is running:

# If installed via package manager
sudo systemctl start redis

# Or via Docker
docker run -d --name redis -p 6379:6379 redis:8

Verify: redis-cli ping should return PONG.

Start All Services

Start everything with a single command using honcho:

cd platform
source ../.venv/bin/activate
honcho start

This launches four processes defined in the Procfile:

Process Description
server FastAPI backend on :8000 with auto-reload
frontend Vite dev server on :5173, proxies /api to :8000
scheduler RQ worker with --with-scheduler for delayed/recurring jobs
worker RQ worker pool (2 workers) for parallel job processing

The backend auto-creates the SQLite database and runs Alembic migrations on first startup.

Production Mode

For production, build the frontend once with npm run build and access everything through the FastAPI server at http://localhost:8000. No separate frontend server needed.

Manual startup (without honcho)

If you prefer to start services individually in separate terminals:

# Terminal 1 — Backend
cd platform && source ../.venv/bin/activate
uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --reload

# Terminal 2 — RQ Worker with scheduler
cd platform && source ../.venv/bin/activate
rq worker --worker-class worker_class.PipelitWorker workflows --with-scheduler

# Terminal 3 — Frontend (dev)
cd platform/frontend
npm run dev

Setup Wizard

Open http://localhost:5173 in your browser. On first visit, the setup wizard will prompt you to create your admin account:

  1. Choose a username
  2. Set a password
  3. Click Create Account

This creates the first user with full admin privileges and generates an API key for authentication.

Verify Everything Works

After logging in, you should see the workflow dashboard. Verify the backend is healthy:

# Check API is responding
curl -s http://localhost:8000/api/v1/auth/setup-status/ | python -m json.tool

# Check Redis connection
redis-cli ping

Next Step

Continue to the Quickstart Tutorial to build your first workflow.