foolish-bandit adds a one-switch demo mode for the Gary UI

A build-time toggle lets you show off the interface without standing up a real login system first.

workflowinfrastructure

Demoing legal-AI software usually means provisioning accounts, wiring up a live login service, and praying nothing breaks five minutes before the call. foolish-bandit's fork sidesteps that. Flip a single switch when the app is built and the frontend skips authentication entirely, signing you in as a built-in demo user so you can click straight through the interface.

The honest caveat: this is for walking through the screens, not running a live system. Anything that talks to the backend still expects a real login and will be turned away, so it's a UI tour rather than a working demo. The switch is baked in at build time, which is the clever part - you can't flip it on in production by accident, and a thin amber banner sits across every page whenever the bypass is active so nobody mistakes the demo identity for the real thing.

So what Useful for anyone who pitches or sells on top of this codebase and wants to show the interface without a full backend behind it.

View this fork on GitHub →

Spotted something wrong? Or know the PR text has fresher detail than the writeup above?

Commits in this thread

2 commits from foolish-bandit/gary, oldest first. Source extracted verbatim from the harvested git log.

SHA	Subject	Author	Date
`ad478709`	Merge pull request #11 from foolish-bandit/claude/dev-auth-bypass	Zack Brenner	2026-05-07	↗ GitHub
Add NEXT_PUBLIC_GARY_SKIP_AUTH dev/demo bypass
`0b9ad4db`	Add NEXT_PUBLIC_GARY_SKIP_AUTH dev/demo bypass	Claude	2026-05-07	↗ GitHub
commit body Lets us inspect the app without going through Supabase login during development and on demo deploys. Frontend-only. When NEXT_PUBLIC_GARY_SKIP_AUTH=true: - AuthContext initializes with a fake demo user ({ id: "00000000-...-000", email: "demo@gary.local" }) via lazy useState, so isAuthenticated is true immediately. - The Supabase session check + auth-state-change subscription are skipped (the useEffect bails out after a one-time console.warn). - signOut becomes a no-op so the demo session stays stable. - A slim amber "Dev auth bypass enabled" banner renders at the top of the (pages) layout via the new DevAuthBanner component. - The flag is exposed as `isAuthBypassed` on the auth context so any consumer can branch on it later. When the flag is unset or "false": - useState initializers return null/true, identical to today. - The effect's bypass branch is dead and the original Supabase logic runs unchanged. Login/signup, signOut, and the redirect gate in (pages)/layout.tsx are untouched. Documents the variable in frontend/.env.local.example as commented-out so normal setups stay on real auth. No backend changes, no schema changes, no auth contract changes. Backend calls made while the bypass is on will 401 because no real Supabase session exists - that's intentional and noted in the console warning. https://claude.ai/code/session_019pRkhcGDRKQWHjzAnV5yCL

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