Run MedBrains locally

You need: macOS or Linux, Docker, Rust via rustup, Node 24 and pnpm 10. The first Rust build is large: 16 GB of RAM and about 60 GB of free disk are recommended.

Start the server

git clone https://github.com/medbrains/medbrains.git
cd medbrains/medbrains
cp .env.example .env
make db              # PostgreSQL and supporting services in Docker
make dev-db-roles    # the app's database roles
make dev-backend     # builds and runs the server on :3000; migrations run on start

Start the web app

In a second terminal:

cd medbrains/medbrains
pnpm install
pnpm dev:web         # http://localhost:5173

Sign in with hospital code DEFAULT and username admin. In development the password is shown on the sign-in page under "Dev credentials". Set MEDBRAINS_SEED_ADMIN_PASSWORD before the first start to choose your own, and MEDBRAINS_SEED_DEMO_DATA=true for sample data.

make dev starts everything at once behind a local HTTPS proxy. Run make help for every target.

One cargo build at a time

Run scripts/build_guard.sh before any cargo build, check, test or clippy. Two builds at once thrash the machine. Build only the crate you changed: cargo clippy -p <crate>.

Run this docs site

pnpm --filter @medbrains/docs dev      # http://localhost:3010/help/
pnpm --filter @medbrains/docs build    # fails on any broken link

build:public builds it for docs.medbrains.in, at the root path.