zgbrenner gives Gary a face and plants a flag in U.S. soil

A branding-and-readiness pass turns Gary from an unlabelled fork into something that introduces itself as the American version of Mike.

brandingi18n

No application behaviour changed here, but the fork's pitch did. Gary now ships a full product README - logo, feature list, and a walkthrough - that states plainly what it is: a U.S.-focused fork of Mike, aimed at American lawyers rather than engineers. The setup guide is written in plain English, the British terminology has been swapped for U.S. usage, and the page spells out exactly how Gary diverges from the upstream project.

It also documents the working parts a buyer would ask about: eight ready-made legal task presets, a bring-your-own-API-key model so you connect your own AI accounts (with a test-connection step), a Matter Document Review template, and export actions. For anyone deciding whether a fork is worth a look, this is the clearest scope statement in the repo - which is the point of the work.

So what If you're sizing up which Mike fork fits a U.S. practice, Gary now tells you where it stands without making you read the code.

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