I maintain LocalEmu, a free and open-source (Apache 2.0) AWS emulator. It started as a fork of the archived LocalStack Community edition. The goal is to keep a genuinely free, open local AWS emulator alive and maintained.
What it does:
- Emulates 132 AWS services on a single endpoint (
localhost:4566) - Pure-Python core, with real Docker engines for Lambda, EC2, RDS, ECS, EKS, and OpenSearch
- Point your existing AWS CLI, boto3, Terraform, CDK, or Pulumi at it, zero config
- No account, no auth token, no telemetry. Persistent state across restarts
- Optional fidelity knobs: IAM policy enforcement, throttling, latency injection, Lambda cold starts
Why I built it: kill the multi-minute deploy loop, drop the dev/test AWS bill to zero, and stop keeping real credentials on dev machines.
It’s for fast local dev, testing, and learning, not production, and not bit-for-bit parity with the real cloud.
Repo: https://github.com/localemu/localemu Site: https://localemu.cloud/
Happy to answer questions, and feedback is very welcome.
Lmao I use AI coding for work dude, not that I particularly enjoy it, but I’m required to.
This project does not solve any problems I have, and someone else asked if it was AI generated. Since I’ve seen a ton of AI output I’ve gotten a bit of an eye to look out for telltale signs. Sure enough, the first file I clicked into had these signs. You open sourced this code and shared it to others, it is absolutely my business on how it was developed
You seem to have tried to hide any references to your use of AI, which I feel is quite disingenuous. I do use projects that have had some AI contributions, notably Home Assistant and Dawarich, both of which inform me before deployment.
Hiding this is immediately a security and privacy issue to me, so if it did solve a problem of mine, it would’ve been subject to significantly more scrutiny.
If you’re going to use AI, just disclose its use. Others can be the judge of whether they want to engage with it or not