How the demos work

Every example and industry page offers a free canned demo with no sign-up gate. Today’s instant trials use the deterministic scheduling and obligation engines with example inputs; they validate bounded input and enforce request limits. Anonymous visitors incur no AI cost and can run the demos immediately.

Some industries use a clearly labeled related-engine example while their primary engine is planned. The marina trial on the scheduler page uses the same deterministic path without a paid model call.

The “try your own scenario” path is now in source behind free email sign-up through Clerk. Signed-out visitors see “free sign-up here”, linking to /sign-up?redirect_url=… to return to their example. The paid /api/demos endpoints use server-side Clerk auth(): anonymous calls return 401 before parsing text, accessing storage or starting work.

The free AI sample is guarded server-side per user: default 3 runs/day and 10 total, configurable through DEMO_USER_DAILY and DEMO_USER_TOTAL. The demo_user_usage counters are keyed by the Clerk user ID only; no email address is copied into the marketing database. Each admitted job consumes one sample, including cancellation or a later fallback; rejected admissions consume none.

The code enforces a global concurrency limit (default 3), a $5/day cap and a $75/month cap, with a reservation ceiling of $0.08 per job. The default model is spacexai/grok-4.7 through Vercel AI Gateway, downshifting to spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-reasoning at 80% of the committed daily budget, including outstanding reservations. At 100%, it returns a deterministic fallback; it also falls back earlier if the next reservation would exceed either cap. Any wait message is only for signed-in users. These are limits on the free sample, not performance measurements or a promise of completions.

The code is in place and fails closed. Production stays on the deterministic fallback until the operator provisions the marketing database with migrations 001–003, CRON_SECRET for the recovery and cleanup sweep, and a Gateway credential (runtime OIDC or AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY). Clerk email sign-up and the web app’s Clerk keys must also be configured. Missing or unavailable Gateway credentials or budget infrastructure prevent paid dispatch. This describes the implementation in source, not live AI running in production.

In the signed-in path, models propose typed inputs and explanations; deterministic engines still validate the result. Scheduling must pass the independent verifier, obligation quotes must match exact source spans and unverifiable narration falls back to the deterministic explanation.

The form shows the AI notice and temporary-storage notice before any text goes to a model. Retention is optional and off by default. Running a demo temporarily stores text and results for up to 24 hours; without opt-in, input is deleted when the job finishes. Results may contain source quotes until expiry, and opted-in input also expires within 24 hours. This page itself does not send text to a model.