---
title: Setting Up
description: You can use this document to setup the dev environment for yourself. 
---
<Note>
If the below steps do not work out for you, it would be great if you can open an issue on [Github](https://github.com/dograh-hq/dograh/issues). 
</Note>

### System Requirements
- git to clone the forked repository
- Node.js 24 to run the UI (we recommend using [NVM](https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm) to manage your node versions locally)
- Python 3.13 to run the backend
- Docker to run the database and redis cache locally

### Steps
1. Fork the Dograh repository by going to https://github.com/dograh-hq/dograh
2. Clone the forked repository on your machine
```
git clone https://github.com/<GITHUB_HANDLE>/dograh
cd dograh
```
3. Create a python virtual environment
```
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
```
4. Install the requirements
```
pip install -r api/requirements.txt
```
5. Ensure you are on right version of Node.js using `node --version`
```
nvm use 24
```
6. Install UI dependencies
```
cd ui && npm install
```
7. Start local docker services after making sure you dont have any other instance of postgres or redis running by checking `docker ps`
```
cd .. && docker compose -f docker-compose-local.yaml up
```
8. Setup environment variables
``
cp api/.env.example api/.env && cp ui/.env.example ui/.env
``
9. Setup pipecat
```
bash scripts/setup_pipecat.sh
```
10. Start backend services 
<Note>If you wish to start the services in debug mode, we ship a launch.json file which you can use in VSCode.</Note>
```
bash scripts/start_services.sh
```
11.