diff --git a/init.sh b/init.sh
index c92f9c5f30c8d01014ef3a3feed00933a92b85f3..4a0c2a384f4adcad2eda409309c41a835e6dc2d1 100755
--- a/init.sh
+++ b/init.sh
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ fi
 isAvailable nvm || isAvailable nodenv || { echo >&2 "Neither nvm nor nodenv are installed. Please install one of them according to README.md and run $0 again afterwards"; exit 1; }
 
 ensureAvailable ory
-ensureAvailable emulator
+#ensureAvailable emulator
 ensureAvailable docker-compose
 
 # dependencies we can auto-install
@@ -57,6 +57,9 @@ popd
 git clone git@gitlab.com:holisticfoundation/holi-okuna.git holi-okuna >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
 pushd holi-okuna
 direnv allow .
+source .venv/bin/activate
+pip install -r requirements-cli-only.txt
+pip install -r requirements.txt
 popd
 
 git clone git@gitlab.com:holisticfoundation/holi-unified-api.git holi-unified-api >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
@@ -75,5 +78,13 @@ cat << EOF
 
 All set up. You can now set up the projects in your IDE and start a development environment.
 
-For starting it, execute \`mprocs\`.
+For starting it, execute
+
+\`mprocs\`
+
+  or
+
+\`mprocs -c mprocs-local-backend.json\`
+
+if you also want to run the locally.
 EOF
diff --git a/mprocs-local-backend.json b/mprocs-local-backend.json
index a95e459e2cdead0d4b73e4e57bfc03d6dc6eae66..de9c8325db64489420fe1e20965c07d771740d4e 100644
--- a/mprocs-local-backend.json
+++ b/mprocs-local-backend.json
@@ -19,15 +19,17 @@
       "cwd": "<CONFIG_DIR>/holi-unified-api/oathkeeper"
     },
     "unified-api": {
-      "shell": "./wait-for-port.sh 8000; cd holi-unified-api; yarn dev"
+      "comment": "we wait for Django (port 8000), otherwise starting GraphQL mesh will fail",
+      "shell": "../wait-for-port.sh 8000; yarn dev",
+      "cwd": "<CONFIG_DIR>/holi-unified-api"
     },
     "okuna-services": {
-      "shell": "pip3 install -r requirements-cli-only.txt; python3 okuna-cli.py up-services-only",
+      "shell": "source .venv/bin/activate && python okuna-cli.py up-services-only",
       "cwd": "<CONFIG_DIR>/holi-okuna"
     },
     "okuna-server": {
-      "comment": "Before starting the server process, the services need to be up. Therefore, we wait until the services are up via a small until loop.",
-      "shell": "until docker ps|grep okuna-worker; do sleep 1; done; source .venv/bin/activate; pip3 install -r requirements.txt; python3 manage.py runserver localhost:8000 || echo 'maybe you need to execute \"python manage.py migrate\" again?'",
+      "comment": "we wait for postgres (port 5432), otherwise starting Django will fail",
+      "shell": "../wait-for-port.sh 5432; source .venv/bin/activate && python manage.py runserver localhost:8000 || echo 'maybe you need to execute \"python manage.py migrate\" again?'",
       "cwd": "<CONFIG_DIR>/holi-okuna"
     }
   }