Running Frontend and Backend Separately in Dev Mode

[usmanalisons]

Hi everyone,

I cloned LibreChat

After this, ran the below

npm run build:data-provider && npm run build:data-schemas && npm run build:api

and started the backend with:

npm run backend:dev

and the frontend with:

npm run frontend:dev

I haven't run npm run frontend or built the client, so the client/dist folder doesn’t exist.

However, in server/index.js, I see the following:

const indexPath = path.join(app.locals.paths.dist, 'index.html');
const indexHTML = fs.readFileSync(indexPath, 'utf8');

This causes the server to always look for client/dist/index.html, regardless of the environment. As expected, I get this error in the backend console:

2025-07-30 11:08:08 error: There was an uncaught error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open 'C:\Users\muhammad.usman\Desktop\work\LibreChat\client\dist\index.html'

Is there a recommended way to run the backend and frontend separately in development mode without building the frontend first?

Or should the server code be adjusted to only load dist/index.html in production?

Thanks in advance!

@danny-avila

[ming-yop]

you need to run docker first to build those folders