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for production, i was going to go that route, but this is for dev environment, it's not close to being where it should be run live.

Docker for development is even better than for production.

If you would be willing to show me the path, I'll be more than happy to look into it / go that route (but honestly how do you develop in a docker container or is that part mounted -v )

You basically mount a directory with the source code as a docker volume, so the application is executed inside a container but you can modify files locally on your machine. I can elaborate more in Discord or Slack if you want.

Would love to simplify this: hit me up in discord sometime, anytime :)