Dev Tunnels (Self-hosted ngrok)

We run a self-hosted tunneling service that exposes your local dev servers to the internet via HTTPS. This replaces ngrok.

How it works

localhost:5173 → frpc (your machine) → frps (GCP VM) → https://yourname.dev.review-time.info

• frps (server) runs on a GCP VM with Caddy for automatic HTTPS (Let's Encrypt wildcard certificate)
• frpc (client) runs on your machine and creates a tunnel to the server
• Each dev gets unique subdomains under *.dev.review-time.info

Setup

1. Install frpc

brew install frpc

2. Create your config

Copy the example config from the repo root:

cp frpc.example.toml frpc.toml

Edit frpc.toml:

• Replace yourname with your first name (e.g. vincent, alex)
• Adjust localPort to match your dev server

3. Set your auth token

Ask a team member for the FRP token, then export it:

export FRP_TOKEN="the-shared-token"

TIP

Add this to your ~/.zshrc so you don't have to export it every time:

echo 'export FRP_TOKEN="the-shared-token"' >> ~/.zshrc

4. Start the tunnel

frpc -c frpc.toml

Your local server is now available at your personal tunnel URL.

How to construct your URL

Your tunnel URL follows this pattern:

https://{yourname}.dev.review-time.info/

For example, if your name is Vincent, your URL is:

https://vincent.dev.review-time.info/

Multiple proxies

You can expose multiple local services at once. Add more [[proxies]] blocks to your frpc.toml:

[[proxies]]
name = "vincent-front"
type = "http"
localPort = 5173
subdomain = "vincent"

[[proxies]]
name = "vincent-api"
type = "http"
localPort = 3000
subdomain = "vincent-api"

[[proxies]]
name = "vincent-mobile"
type = "http"
localPort = 8081
subdomain = "vincent-mobile"

Each subdomain must be unique across the team. Convention: {yourname}-{service}.

Infrastructure details

For maintainers who need to manage the server.

Server location

• GCP project: tell-ia-dev
• VM: frp-tunnel in europe-west1-b
• IP: 34.62.32.239 (remember to reserve it so it doesn't change)

SSH into the server

gcloud compute ssh frp-tunnel --zone=europe-west1-b

Services

All services run in /opt/frp/ via Docker Compose:

Service	Role
frps	FRP server — accepts client connections on port 7000, serves HTTP on port 8080
caddy	Reverse proxy — handles HTTPS (port 443) with auto Let's Encrypt wildcard cert, forwards to frps

Common operations

cd /opt/frp

# Check status
docker compose ps

# View logs
docker compose logs -f caddy
docker compose logs -f frps

# Restart after config change
docker compose restart frps    # if frps.toml changed
docker compose restart caddy   # if Caddyfile changed

# Full restart
docker compose down && docker compose up -d

Config files on the server

File	Purpose
frps.toml	FRP server config (port, auth token, subdomain host)
Caddyfile	Caddy reverse proxy + TLS config
.env	AWS credentials for Route 53 DNS challenge
Dockerfile.caddy	Custom Caddy build with Route 53 DNS plugin
docker-compose.yml	Orchestrates frps + caddy

DNS

Two A records in AWS Route 53 (hosted zone review-time.info):

Record	Value
dev.review-time.info	34.62.32.239
*.dev.review-time.info	34.62.32.239

Changing the auth token

1. Generate a new token: openssl rand -hex 32
2. Update frps.toml on the server
3. docker compose restart frps
4. Share the new token with the team