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What do you mean by locally? If you want HTTPS automatically then the site must be publically available so that LetsEncrypt can verify the domain and grant the certificate. If that's not possible then you'll have to use the DNS challenge and setup a provider plugin.

It doesn't matter where the backend points and you can use it to serve a docker container if you want, but that's different from the the host/frontend address you use.

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Locally in the sense of a local development server. The issue is that there wouldn't be a real DNS record pointing at the machine (well, unless you added one to point at your external IP address, but that's a pain for teams). I guess if Let's Encrypt needs to verify the domain it won't be possible...

Then you need to acquire the certificate yourself. Or just use a self-signed certificate since it's your own machine....

Let's encrypt can issue certs without needing a public route to your machine if you use the dns challenge. Here's what I do:

1. Add a public A record (or host file) local.mydomain.tld to 127.0.0.1.

2. Host my dns with cloudflare (other providers have plugins too), and install the caddy plugin to do the dns challenge for certs.

3. Caddy can then get certs for local.mydomain.tld and serve them locally.

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