Guide · Developer · 4 min

Test with the sandbox/local mode (npm run dev:local, MOCK_AI, LOCAL_STORAGE_DIR)

Run the whole product on your laptop with no cloud accounts.

Local mode starts an isolated in-memory-backed MongoDB, stores uploads on disk, fakes the AI services, and seeds demo data. Nothing touches AWS, Google Cloud, your staging database or real mailboxes.

bash

npm install
npm run dev:local

MOCK_AI=1 replaces Document AI OCR and face comparison with deterministic sample results. Results are fake, so you cannot judge real accuracy in this mode.
LOCAL_STORAGE_DIR=.local-storage writes uploads to that folder instead of S3.
Both switches are hard-disabled when NODE_ENV=production.
The command prints a demo admin login and a demo API key. Use them with curl exactly as in the quickstart, pointing at http://localhost:3000.

Create a local session

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/session/init \
  -H "x-api-key: <demo key printed by dev:local>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"clientId":"local","flow":"KYC","applicationId":"t-1"}'

Webhook testing

Webhook URLs must be public, so localhost receivers are refused. Use a tunnel, or read /info instead while developing.

Camera on a phone

To test capture from a phone you need HTTPS. Use a tunnel with a TLS URL and set the base URL accordingly.