Developer Seth Pyle has launched Hiraeth, a lightweight AWS emulator focused on fast local integration testing. The project emerged as an alternative to Localstack following recent pricing and licensing changes. Hiraeth's initial release targets Amazon SQS, offering a 4MB Docker image with instant startup and AWS SigV4 authentication support.

Hiraeth stores state in SQLite and provides a web admin UI for debugging local emulator state. The tool supports most SQS API operations including queue creation, message sending and receiving, and attribute management. Developers can start Hiraeth with Docker Compose and use standard AWS CLI commands against the local endpoint at http://localhost:4566. The emulator includes seeded test credentials and supports both Docker and Docker Compose workflows.

Currently in early development, Hiraeth is designed for local development and test environments rather than production use. The project implements AWS SDK-compatible request handling and includes comprehensive SQS API support with some limitations in FIFO queue behavior and IAM enforcement. All runtime code is hand-written with AI tools assisting in test generation and documentation. Hiraeth is open-source under the MIT License and available on GitHub Container Registry.