Installation

This page gets an AutoTestX server running on your own computer. To set up a shared server for a team, follow this page first to try it out, then see Deployment.

Requirements

Node.js	20.11 or newer (node --version)
npm	the version that comes with Node.js
Operating system	Windows, macOS or Linux. The optional AutoTestX Agent is Windows-only.
Disk	about 1 GB, including the Chromium browser Playwright downloads

Install

From the project folder:

npm install

npx playwright install chromium

npm run build:web

• npm install installs every package in the workspace (packages/*).
• npx playwright install chromium downloads the browser that runs your tests.
• npm run build:web builds the web application the server hosts. Run it again after you update AutoTestX.

Start the server

npm start

Open http://127.0.0.1:4100 in your browser. You will see the sign-in page.

The server keeps running until you stop it (Ctrl+C in its terminal). Everything you create is stored as files in the .data folder next to the project. See Data, backup and seeding.

Useful start-up options

Set these as environment variables before npm start. The full list is in Configuration.

Variable	Default	Use it to…
PORT	4100	run on another port
HOST	127.0.0.1	listen on another interface
ATX_DATA_DIR	./.data	keep data somewhere else, e.g. a second, separate installation
ATX_HEADED	off	set to 1 to show the browser for every run (debugging)
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	not set	turn on Write with AI

PowerShell example (a second instance with its own data on port 4150):

$env:PORT = "4150"; $env:ATX_DATA_DIR = ".data-trial"; npm start

Optional: the demo API

The API testing, data-driven and custom code examples call a small demo API. Start it in a second terminal when you want to run those examples:

npm run demo:api

It listens on http://localhost:4300.

Check the installation (optional)

npm test

This runs the unit tests and a smoke test of the browser injection code. All of them should pass.

Next

→ First sign-in