End the Demo on Purpose

The article discusses the importance of creating a demo receipt to ensure transparency and security during demo calls. A solo founder had a demo call at four but faced issues with the status page running only on one laptop, limiting the ability to share a public link. The article emphasizes that public posts praising generated pages and profile toys still require a host boundary and an end time. It highlights that a pretty demo without a receipt is essentially a laptop story.

The article also touches upon the use of free coding models and servers, stating that neither should hold customer records. It mentions that a founder should read the current project terms before proceeding and suggests saving a receipt file in the repo root, which contains crucial information about the demo's scope, status page, host role, payment policies, and other restrictions. The receipt is meant to freeze the scope before any model edits and should not contain any customer data.

The article presents a local drill using a proposed health.py script that runs on localhost until a human chooses a host. The script reports a start time and a demo flag. It also introduces a guard.sh script that fails when risky filenames appear in the tree, ensuring that no sensitive information is included. The founder is advised to run the guard script after adding files but before the first add, and to check the terminal for any traceback before blaming the host.

The founder is instructed to open a free model session after the guard exists and add a public index.html file with one sentence and a health link. Allowed files include public/index.html, while RECEIPT.md, health.py, and guard.sh are forbidden files. The article stresses that the founder should not add forms, cookies, payments, or external trackers. If a change requires a secret, the process should be stopped, and a green guard should only indicate that the promise matches the tree, not serve as a security audit.

Finally, the article suggests adding a note at the end of the demo receipt recording the host name and the time when the demo should end. This note ensures that the founder has a clear record of the demo's timeline and limitations, promoting transparency and accountability throughout the process.