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Stuck, confused, or weighing an architectural tradeoff? You are not alone—most “mystery” issues here turn out to be a missing env var or a skipped Getting Started step, and those are the fun ones because they are quick to fix. Here is how to reach humans (and how to help the next person reading this page).

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Discord community

The fastest way to get help is the Refract Discord. Post your question in #help and either I or a fellow Refract builder will get you unstuck. Every answered question in Discord helps the next person who hits the same issue — so asking publicly is genuinely better than asking privately. Join the Refract Discord →

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Contact

Prefer a direct line? Use the contact form and I’ll get back to you personally. Get in touch → Genuine questions get a personal reply — sales pitches and spam don’t.

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First-run troubleshooting

If the stack won’t start, check these first: make start / make fresh-start fails immediately → Confirm .env.development exists at the repo root (check-env requires it). Stripe authentication message → Run make stripe-setup, complete the browser flow, then start again. Auth expires ~every 90 days. Port conflict errors → Something else is using a published port (8888, 4000, 4010, 3000, 5432, 6379, …). Stop the conflicting service or remap the host side in compose.yml. If you change dev-proxy, update APP_URL to match — see Configuration system. Docker errors before any container starts → Docker Desktop isn’t running. Open it, wait for “Running”, then retry. Backend crash loop → Open Dozzle. Usually a bad .env.development value — Stripe keys, Postgres credentials, or POSTGRES_HOST (must be rds inside Compose).

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Before reaching out

It’s worth checking if your question is already answered in the docs:

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Reporting a bug

Found something broken? Post it in #help on Discord with:
  • The exact error message
  • Steps to reproduce
  • Your OS and Docker Desktop version
  • Output from docker compose ps if containers are involved
If it’s a security issue, do not post it publicly — contact me directly and I’ll treat it as a priority.

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Feature requests

Have an idea for a new adapter, pattern, or improvement? Post it in #feature-requests on Discord. Upvotes from the community directly influence what gets built next.

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Response times

I’m a solo founder — I don’t have a support team. I check Discord regularly and read every contact form submission personally. The Discord community often answers questions faster than I can — don’t wait for me if someone else can help.

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What’s next?

  • Updating Refract — pull upstream improvements into your project without losing your changes.
  • Getting started — back to the beginning if you need a fresh orientation.