The Prisma or TypeORM article settled how the API talks to Postgres. What's still missing is the thing that makes all of it reproducible. A way for anyone on the team, including future you on a new laptop, to run the whole stack with one command and get the exact same result.
That's what this article is about. We already reached for Docker to run Postgres in the PostgreSQL setup, so the container habit is half-formed already. Here's what we add: a docker-compose.yml that runs the API, the web app, Postgres, and Redis together. Dockerfiles that support fast local iteration without turning into a production liability. And the handful of pitfalls that waste the most time when a team first containerizes its dev environment.
This is part six of the Full Stack SaaS Masterclass, continuing from the data-access layer we picked last time.
Why containerize local development at all
Docker in local dev doesn't need to match production infrastructure. Your production deployment (ECS, Kubernetes, whatever you land on later in the series) will look different from a laptop compose file regardless. The real case for it is narrower and more practical: it removes an entire category of setup problems.
