Skip to main content

Development Setup

Prerequisites​

  • uv (manages Python and dependencies; Python 3.10 to 3.13)
  • Node.js (LTS) and Yarn 3.5.0
  • Git

1. Clone the Repository​

git clone https://github.com/DashAISoftware/DashAI.git
cd DashAI
git checkout develop

2. Backend Setup​

Install all dependencies (uv creates the .venv and installs the package in editable mode, including development dependencies):

uv sync
uv run pre-commit install

On machines without an NVIDIA GPU you can use the CPU-only PyTorch wheels, which are much lighter:

uv sync --extra cpu

On NVIDIA machines, the cuda extra pins the CUDA 12.8 PyTorch wheels. To also get LLM (GGUF) support with CUDA offload, set CMAKE_ARGS so that llama-cpp-python compiles against CUDA (requires CMake, a C compiler and the CUDA toolkit):

uv cache clean llama-cpp-python
CMAKE_ARGS="-DGGML_CUDA=on" uv sync --extra cuda --reinstall-package llama-cpp-python

The first command and the --reinstall-package flag matter: uv skips packages that are already installed and caches built wheels, and neither check looks at CMAKE_ARGS, so without them a previous CPU build gets silently reused. Without CMAKE_ARGS, llama-cpp-python still installs but runs on CPU (there is no prebuilt CUDA wheel on PyPI). If nvcc rejects your default gcc as too new, point it at an older one you have installed, for example CMAKE_ARGS="-DGGML_CUDA=on -DCMAKE_CUDA_HOST_COMPILER=/usr/bin/g++-13".

Alternatively, plain pip works inside any environment (venv or conda), since all metadata lives in pyproject.toml. Note this skips the lockfile, so versions may differ slightly from the ones the team and CI use:

pip install -e . --group dev    # --group needs pip >= 25.1
pre-commit install

If you go the pip route, drop the uv run prefix from the commands below.

3. Frontend Setup​

cd DashAI/front
yarn install

Running in Development​

Backend (from the repo root):

uv run python -m DashAI
# or
uv run dashai --no-browser --logging-level INFO

Important: if you synced with an extra, pass the same extra to uv run (for example uv run --extra cpu python -m DashAI). A plain uv run re-syncs the environment to the default set and swaps your PyTorch build back to the PyPI one.

Frontend (development server with hot reload):

cd DashAI/front
yarn start

The backend runs at http://localhost:8000 and the frontend dev server at http://localhost:3000.

Linting and Formatting​

Python (using Ruff):

uv run ruff check . --fix
uv run ruff format .

Frontend (ESLint + Prettier):

cd DashAI/front
yarn lint

Pre-commit Hooks​

dashAI uses pre-commit hooks for consistent code quality:

# Run all hooks manually
uv run pre-commit run --all-files

# Run on staged files (happens automatically on git commit)
uv run pre-commit run

Project Structure​

DashAI/
├── DashAI/
│   ├── __main__.py         # CLI entry point (Typer)
│   ├── back/               # FastAPI backend
│   │   ├── app.py          # Application factory
│   │   ├── container.py    # Kink DI container
│   │   ├── initial_components.py  # Startup component registration
│   │   ├── api/            # Routers and request/response schemas
│   │   ├── converters/     # Converter components
│   │   ├── dataloaders/    # DataLoader components
│   │   ├── dependencies/   # Registry, database engine, job queue
│   │   ├── explainability/ # Explainer components
│   │   ├── exploration/    # Explorer components
│   │   ├── job/            # Job implementations
│   │   ├── metrics/        # Metric components
│   │   ├── models/         # ML model components
│   │   ├── optimizers/     # Hyperparameter optimizer components
│   │   ├── plugins/        # Plugin loading system
│   │   ├── tasks/          # Task components
│   │   └── types/          # Shared type definitions
│   └── front/              # React frontend
│       └── src/
│           ├── api/        # HTTP client
│           ├── components/ # UI components
│           └── pages/      # Page components
├── docs/                   # Documentation site (Docusaurus)
├── tests/                  # Backend tests
└── alembic/                # Database migrations