Environments
What exists, what each is for, and the naming that catches people out.
The environments
A naming warning
For historical reasons, several live resources are named as though they were staging. They are production. Before acting on any resource name, confirm what it actually serves — the name is not evidence.
Running locally
The database sits inside a private network, so a laptop cannot reach it directly. For interface work the fast path is to run only the web application locally and point its API proxy at a deployed environment — the proxy runs server-side, so no CORS is involved, and authentication still works because the app sends a bearer token rather than a host-locked cookie.
Standing the whole backend up locally requires real secrets and is rarely necessary unless you are changing the API itself.