zgbrenner turns Mike into Gary, and makes it look the part

A top-to-bottom rebrand that recasts a renamed clone as a deliberate product for U.S. lawyers.

brandingcompliance

zgbrenner has finished the work of turning the upstream Mike codebase into something called Gary - and crucially, says explicitly that no new features came with it. This is pure identity: the app's name throughout the interface, the way the built-in AI introduces itself, the author label stamped on tracked changes in exported documents, and the social-preview cards that show up when someone shares a link all now say Gary, positioned as "open-source legal AI for U.S. lawyers."

What stands out is the restraint. The AI's self-description and the public-facing copy deliberately avoid accuracy guarantees and note the tool isn't bar-compliant - a careful posture you don't always see in legal-AI branding. zgbrenner also added an automated check that flags any leftover traces of the old name, so the rebrand stays clean over time.

So what Worth a look for anyone evaluating which Mike forks are weekend experiments versus serious products with an owner thinking about how they present to lawyers.

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 zgbrenner/gary, oldest first. Source extracted verbatim from the harvested git log.

SHA Subject Author Date
b270b9aa Merge pull request #3 from foolish-bandit/claude/gary-us-simplification-AjDDT Zack Brenner 2026-05-19 ↗ GitHub
Gary branding, metadata, and public-readiness polish
9d868c45 chore: Gary branding, metadata, and public-readiness polish Claude 2026-05-19 ↗ GitHub
commit body
Make Gary feel like a coherent, intentional open-source product rather
than a lightly renamed fork. No new functionality.

Branding / user-facing copy:
- App-shell wordmark, global-error page title, and the built-in
  Saved Legal Task author label now read "Gary" instead of "Mike".
- Backend AI identity prompts (chat system prompt, Review Table
  assistant prompt) and the DOCX tracked-change author now say "Gary".
- Column-prompt placeholders, the support form, and the backend
  startup log say "Gary".
- Remaining "tabular review" wording in user-facing/LLM-facing strings
  updated to "Review Table" / "document review model".

App metadata (frontend/src/app/layout.tsx):
- Title "Gary - Open-source legal AI for U.S. lawyers" and a factual
  description across the page, Open Graph, and Twitter cards.
- metadataBase now reads NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL (documented in
  .env.local.example) instead of a hard-coded mikeoss.com domain.
- Avoids unsupported claims (no accuracy guarantee, not bar-compliant).

Visual assets:
- Add Gary social preview (SVG + rasterized PNG, 1200x630), a Gary
  wordmark/monogram logo, a standalone G mark, and a generated
  apple-touch-icon. Remove the orphaned MikeOSS link-image.jpg.
- The favicon (abstract aperture) is intentionally kept - it carries
  no Mike branding and doubles as the in-app loading spinner.

Documentation:
- Rewrite the root README: plain-English intro, who it's for, what it
  does, the 7-step product flow, bring-your-own-key explanation, how
  Gary differs from MikeOSS, features, limitations, roadmap, and a
  License & attribution section preserving the AGPL-3.0 / MikeOSS
  credit. Developer setup moved below the product overview.
- Add docs/README.md as a documentation index linking the setup
  guide, legal disclaimer, terminology map, and safe-testing doc.
- Point the CONTRIBUTING.md security link at the Gary repo.
- Update safe-local-testing.md to say Gary.

Tests:
- Add frontend/src/lib/branding.test.ts: metadata uses Gary and avoids
  unsupported claims, wordmark renders Gary, README credits MikeOSS
  and lists features + product flow, docs index links key docs, and
  the Gary visual assets exist.

Intentionally left unchanged (internal, renaming would add risk):
package names ("mike" / "mike-backend"), code identifiers (MikeProject,
MikeIcon, mikeApi, MikeLayout, etc.), the tabular_reviews /
organisation database columns, and the signup Terms/Privacy links
(no Gary-hosted legal pages exist yet - self-hosters substitute their
own).

Capture this thread into my fork

Download a single Markdown prompt that tells Claude how to port every commit above into your working tree — adapting paths and structure to match your repo. Run it via claude -p < capture-thread-533.md from inside the repo you want the changes in.

⬇ Download capture-thread-533.md