Setup

Prerequisites

Install the following tools before getting started:

• Docker
• Terraform (>= 1.8)
• AWS CLI
• uv (Python package manager)
• jq

Git Hooks

Run this once after cloning the repo:

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

This activates the pre-commit hook which:

• Runs type-checking on backend changes before every commit
• Keeps env-dev.sha256 / env-prod.sha256 in sync when env files change

Secret Files

The following files are not committed to git. Get them from Bitwarden and place them at the paths below:

File	Path	Bitwarden	GitHub Secret
Dev env vars	growl-backend/terraform/.env.dev	✓	ENV_FILE_DEV_B64 (base64-encoded)
Prod env vars	growl-backend/terraform/.env.prod	✓	ENV_FILE_PROD_B64 (base64-encoded)
EC2 SSH key	~/.ssh/growl-key (or wherever you prefer)	✓	EC2_SSH_KEY

Tfvars files are committed to git and do not need to be retrieved separately.

To encode an env file for storing as a GitHub secret:

cat growl-backend/terraform/.env.dev | base64

Caution

If you update an env file, update both Bitwarden and the corresponding GitHub secret.

Running the Backend Locally

The local server reads from growl-backend/.env. Get the dev env file from Bitwarden and place it at growl-backend/.env.

Then start the server:

cd growl-backend
make local-server