Run PawWalk for the first time

Two processes, one app

To see PawWalk working you run two things: the backend (a local web server on port 8000) and the Android app (in the emulator). Here's the one Android-specific wrinkle worth knowing before you run anything:

The emulator is its own little virtual machine — from its point of view, your computer isn't localhost, it's a separate machine reachable at the special address 10.0.2.2. So the app is configured with API_BASE_URL = "http://10.0.2.2:8000" (you'll find this in BuildConfig, generated from app/build.gradle.kts) instead of http://localhost:8000. Same backend, same port — just a different address because the emulator sits one network hop away.

Keep the backend terminal window open while you use the app — if it's not running, the app falls back to built-in sample data so it never looks broken, but you won't see live changes.