I went as far as pulling the node_modules directory from production and perfectly matching the node version on my local machine. Linux -> linux and the app won't run locally. I think it's because the node-gyp influenced deps need to be built locally and linked to the right libs.

I then spent a few hours downgrading each version to isolate the issue...found a few libraries that were hard-deprecated (which was nice), found some breaking changes in the node version I'm using and then I just gave up.