Demo mode

Confabulous supports a demo identity — a read-only, shared-cookie user account that anyone can log in as without credentials. Useful for showcasing the product (this is what powers demo.confabulous.dev).

Enabling

Set a single environment variable:

DEMO_IDENTITY_EMAIL=demo@example.com

When set, the demo user can sign in by visiting the login page — no password required. Their session is automatically impersonated, and write operations return a friendly “read-only” toast in the UI.

When unset, every demo-mode predicate short-circuits to today’s behavior — there’s zero overhead.

What demo users can and cannot do

Action	Demo user
View their own sessions	✅
View shared sessions	✅
View public Trends	✅
Upload new sessions	❌
Share or unshare sessions	❌
Change account settings	❌

Security notes

The demo cookie is HMAC-derived and shared across all visitors of the demo identity. The implementation enforces read-only at the middleware layer, not just the UI — see backend/internal/auth/demo.go for the canonical reference.

Reference deployment

ConfabulousDev/confab-demo-site is the live stack behind demo.confabulous.dev. The combination that makes the site anonymous-readable and sign-ups-closed, from stack/docker-compose.yml:

DEMO_IDENTITY_EMAIL: demo@confabulous.dev
MAX_USERS: "0"
ALLOWED_EMAIL_DOMAINS: confabulous.dev
SHARE_ALL_SESSIONS_TO_AUTHENTICATED: "true"
ENABLE_SHARE_CREATION: "false"
AUTH_PASSWORD_ENABLED: "true"  # operator signs in to upload; OAuth not configured