Mimic is a system meant to act like third party inputs and outputs so that staging systems can get a more realistic, constant, data flow.
The purpose is not to replace other integration tests, but rather to help development teams get a fuller understanding of how the application will behave with longer term data interactions. This includes getting metrics on how external users and systems may perceive the system when a build is being made.
To start developing locally, you can use the vagrant file provided in the vagrant directory:
cd vagrant
vagrant up
vagrant ssh
make install_dev
This will install a local development environment and will install some sample data.