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+# Airflow Development
+
+## Set up `aws-mwaa-local-runner`
+
+AWS provides the [aws-mwaa-local-runner](https://github.com/aws/aws-mwaa-local-runner) repo, which provides a command line interface (CLI) utility that replicates an Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA) environment locally via use of a Docker container. We have forked this repository and made some small changes to enable us to use local-runner while keeping our dags stored in this repository. (See this slack thread for more info: https://apache-airflow.slack.com/archives/CCRR5EBA7/p1690405849653759)
+
+To set up this dev environment, first clone the repo locally:
+
+```
+git clone git@github.com:ucldc/aws-mwaa-local-runner.git
+```
+
+Then, modify `aws-mwaa-local-runner/docker/.env`, setting the following env vars to wherever the directories live on your machine, for example:
+
+```
+DAGS_HOME="/Users/username/dev/rikolti/airflow/dags"
+PLUGINS_HOME="/Users/username/dev/rikolti/airflow/plugins"
+REQS_HOME="/Users/username/dev/rikolti/airflow"
+STARTUP_HOME="/Users/username/dev/rikolti/airflow"
+```
+
+These env vars are used in the `aws-mwaa-local-runner/docker/docker-compose-local.yml` script (and other docker-compose scripts) to mount the relevant directories containing Airflow DAGs, requirements, and plugins files into the docker container.
+
+Then, follow the instructions in the [README](https://github.com/ucldc/aws-mwaa-local-runner/#readme) to build the docker image, run the container, and do local development.
+
+