Start development environment.

nself dev [flags]

nself dev brings up the project stack in development mode by running docker compose up -d from the project root. It is the lighter-weight counterpart to nself start: no orchestrated health checks, no automatic database init step, just a fast bring-up suited to inner-loop work.

With --hot, the command stays attached, polls the plugins/ directory every 2 seconds for source changes, and rebuilds only the changed plugin's container with docker compose up -d --no-deps --build <plugin>. Polling avoids a filesystem-watch dependency. Hot-reload exits cleanly on Ctrl+C and shuts down the watcher (containers keep running).

Use nself dev when you want a minimal start. Use nself start (or its alias nself up) for the production-grade boot with health checks, port pre-flight, and automatic database initialization.

# Start the dev stack
nself dev

# Start with plugin hot-reload (rebuilds changed plugins on the fly)
nself dev --hot

• cmd-start, full boot with health checks and DB init
• cmd-restart, smart restart with config change detection
• cmd-build, regenerate compose and nginx config
• Commands, full command index

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