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api-endpoint

Where the dashboard proxies /api — a per-project spexcode.json default, overridable by the API_URL env.

The dashboard is a thin same-origin caller of one backend: the Vite dev server proxies /api (and the live-terminal WebSocket, via ws:true) to that backend. Which backend is resolved at dev-server start from three sources, highest precedence first:

  1. API_URL env — an ad-hoc or remote endpoint, named at launch.
  2. spexcode.json's dashboard.apiUrl — the per-project default, found by walking up from cwd.
  3. http://localhost:8787 — the default backend.

Source (2) lets a project pin its endpoint once, in the repo, but it only resolves the spexcode.json found by walking up from the dashboard's own cwd — so it names the project's backend only when the board lives inside that project (the co-located/dogfood layout). A shared install (one SpexCode checkout serving many external projects) instead points the same board at each project per-launch with API_URL (source 1) — the board is a project-agnostic viewer, one dev-server per project. The backend itself is chosen the other way — by the cwd spex serve runs in (the portable-layout seam) and its PORT — so this node is only the dashboard→backend hop.