Introducing Hatch

I run a few projects at the same time. Different stacks, different frameworks, different ports. Every time I spin up a new service, it defaults to port 3000. Every time, it conflicts with something already running.

I got tired of remembering which project lives on which port. I got tired of typing localhost:3847 into my browser. I got tired of dealing with CORS issues and cookie restrictions because my local environment runs on HTTP instead of HTTPS.

So I built Hatch.

What it does

Hatch gives you real .test domains with trusted HTTPS certificates on your local machine. You configure a domain, point it at a port, and Hatch handles the rest.

Your setup looks like this:

sites:
  myapp:
    host: localhost
    port: 3000
  api:
    host: localhost
    port: 8080

Now myapp.test serves your frontend over HTTPS. api.myapp.test serves your API. No port numbers to remember. No certificate warnings. No CORS hacks.

How it works

Hatch runs as a background daemon on macOS. It manages three things:

• DNS: A local DNS server that resolves .test domains to 127.0.0.1. Hatch creates resolver files in /etc/resolver/ so macOS knows to route these domains locally.
• TLS certificates: Hatch generates a root CA and intermediate CA, installs them in your system keychain, and issues per-domain certificates on the fly. Your browser trusts them because the root CA is trusted.
• Reverse proxying: An embedded Caddy server accepts HTTPS requests on port 443 and forwards them to your local services. Caddy handles TLS termination, HTTP/2, and automatic certificate management.

One binary. One config file. Run hatch up and everything starts.

The port problem

Here is the scenario that kept happening. I have a Next.js app on port 3000, a Go API on port 8080, and an admin panel on port 3000. Except the admin panel can not use 3000 because Next.js already has it. So I move it to 3001. Then I forget which is which.

With Hatch, every service gets a name. frontend.test, api.frontend.test, admin.frontend.test. The port mapping lives in one config file. I never think about port numbers again.

Per-project config

You can also drop a .hatch.yml file in any project directory. When Hatch detects that directory in your linked paths, it picks up the config automatically.

# .hatch.yml in your project root
domain: myapp
host: localhost
port: 3000

Link the project once:

hatch link /path/to/myapp

Hatch registers the domain and starts proxying. Unlink it when you are done.

What is next

Hatch is open source and available now. Install it with Homebrew:

brew install httphatch/tap/hatch

The source code is on GitHub. Feature requests and bug reports are welcome. If you want to contribute, check out the contributing guide.

I built this because I needed it. If you juggle multiple local services, you might need it too.