managing-astro-local-env

Astro Local Environment

This skill helps you manage your local Airflow environment using the Astro CLI.

Two modes: Docker (default, uses containers) and Standalone (Docker-free, uses a local venv — requires Airflow 3 + uv).

To set up a new project, see the setting-up-astro-project skill. When Airflow is running, use MCP tools from authoring-dags and testing-dags skills.

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Start / Stop / Restart (Docker)

# Start local Airflow (webserver at http://localhost:8080)
astro dev start

# Stop containers (preserves data)
astro dev stop

# Kill and remove volumes (clean slate)
astro dev kill

# Restart all containers
astro dev restart

# Restart specific component
astro dev restart --scheduler
astro dev restart --webserver

Default credentials: admin / admin

Restart after modifying: requirements.txt, packages.txt, Dockerfile

Standalone mode? See the next section.

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Standalone Mode

Docker-free local development. Runs Airflow directly on your machine in a .venv/ managed by uv.

Requirements: Airflow 3 (runtime 3.x), uv on PATH. Not supported on Windows.

Plain astro dev init already pins a runtime 3.x image, so no version flag is needed. See setting-up-astro-project for project initialization.

Start

# One-time: set standalone as default mode
astro config set dev.mode standalone

# Or use the flag per invocation
astro dev start --standalone

Flag	Description
--foreground / -f	Stream output in foreground
--port / -p	Override webserver port (default: 8080)
--no-proxy	Disable reverse proxy

Stop / Kill / Restart

# Stop (preserves .venv)
astro dev stop

# Kill (removes .venv and .astro/standalone/ — clean slate)
astro dev kill

# Restart (preserves .venv for fast restart, use -k to kill first)
astro dev restart

If you used --standalone on start instead of setting the config, pass --standalone on every subsequent command too (stop, kill, restart, bash, run, logs, etc.).