Skip to main content
A demo link signs one person in to your instance without their password. You open it in a browser and you are that person, on the page the link names. It is made for demonstrations: showing Slideless to someone as an editor, a member or a colleague sees it, switching between those accounts in a few clicks, handing a prepared account to a tester for an afternoon. Demo links exist only on an instance whose operator turned them on, and they only ever open demonstration accounts. They have no effect on the cloud edition.

​
Turning it on

Three settings, in the instance’s .env (the compose file passes them through): On your own machine the switch alone is enough, because localhost (and every name under .localhost, and 127.0.0.1) is always allowed:
On a public host you must also name that host, on purpose:
If the switch is on and the host of PUBLIC_BASE_URL is neither local nor listed in DEMO_SIGN_IN_HOSTS, the instance refuses to start and says which variable and which host. A malformed entry in either list (a scheme, a port, a path, a space, a wildcard) refuses the start too. Restart the instance after changing any of the three. Only an address on a domain reserved for examples and tests:
  • example.com, example.net, example.org, and their subdomains;
  • any domain ending in .test, .example, .invalid or .localhost;
  • the domains you listed in DEMO_SIGN_IN_EMAIL_DOMAINS, and their subdomains.
ada@example.com and reviewer@acme.test can be opened; ada@gmail.com cannot, whatever else is true. The reason is simple: a demo link walks past a password, so it must never be able to open a real person’s account. Nobody reads mail at a reserved domain, so an account there is a demonstration account by construction. Add a domain of your own only when every mailbox on it is a demonstration account. An owner of the workspace, signed in, makes a link for an admin or a member of that workspace, or for themself. Never for another owner, never for an account that has a second factor (a link would walk past it), never for a guest invited to a single deck, and never for someone who also belongs to another workspace. A link cannot be made with an API key or by an agent holding one: it takes an owner’s own session. A day by default, a week at most; you choose the lifetime when you make it. You can revoke a link at any moment. When a link expires or is revoked, the sessions it opened end with it: whoever is still signed in through it is signed out on their next click. The link itself is shown once, when it is made. The instance keeps no copy of it.

​
One person per browser window

A link signs the whole browser in as its person, and signs out whoever it was signed in as before. There is no signing in as one person in one tab and another in the next. To show two people side by side, open the second link in another browser profile or in a private window.

​
The banner

While the switch is on, everyone signed in to the instance sees a banner saying so: demo sign-in is on, and an owner of the workspace can open demonstration accounts without their password. It is there so that nobody works on such an instance without knowing. In the dashboard, an owner finds the demo links under Settings while the switch is on: pick the member, the page and the lifetime, copy the link. From the command line, the three commands sign in as the owner for the length of the command and sign out at the end (they never use an API key). The owner’s address and password come from SLIDELESS_OWNER_EMAIL and SLIDELESS_OWNER_PASSWORD, or from --owner-email and --owner-password-stdin:
demo link prints one line per --path. Name several people on one command (--email ada@example.com --email bob@example.com) and it signs in once and makes one link per person and page. The CLI reference lists every flag.

​
What this is not

  • Never turn it on for an instance that holds real people’s accounts. It is for a demonstration instance, a local copy, a test bed, filled with demonstration accounts. The address rule protects real accounts; running it beside them is still a choice to not make.
  • It is not a way to share a deck with someone: a share link does that, and signs nobody in.
  • It does nothing on the cloud edition. There, identity belongs to the Antasphere hub, and demo links are made at the hub.