emmanuelmelvin/ratter-engine

Ratter is a local development tool that solves a common frustration: when you are building software and running several services at once on your computer, you typically have to juggle multiple port numbers (localhost:3000 for the front end, localhost:8080 for the API, and so on). Instead, Ratter lets you use clean, readable addresses like app.local or api.local, the same way a real website works, without manually editing system configuration files. To make this happen, it coordinates three other programs behind the scenes. Caddy is a web server that acts as a middleman, routing traffic from a domain name to whichever service is running on your computer and automatically handling secure HTTPS connections. Technitium DNS Server answers the name-resolution question: when you type api.local into your browser, your computer needs to know what address that points to, and Technitium answers that locally. The third component, mkcert, was previously used to generate trusted local certificates but is now handled by Caddy instead. Ratter itself runs as a small coordination layer on port 4321. When you create or update a local domain through its dashboard or HTTP API, it simultaneously registers a DNS record in Technitium and creates the routing rule in Caddy. Settings are stored in a SQLite database on your machine, and the project also exposes a web dashboard, Swagger UI, and interactive API documentation so you can inspect and manage all your local domains without touching configuration files directly. It is written in TypeScript and requires Node.js along with Caddy and Technitium installed separately.