The public demo

A separate deployment with fictional data that anyone can open with Try the demo. It never touches real data: it has its own database and secrets, it's read-only, and its AI features never call a provider (see ADR 0010).

It runs for free: the app on a Render free web service, the database on Neon's free Postgres. A free Render service sleeps after about 15 minutes without visits, and waking it takes up to a minute. The website's demo link shows "Waking up the demo…" and opens it when it's ready, and the app itself keeps retrying with a "Waking up the server" message instead of an error.

1. Neon: the database

Sign up at neon.tech (free plan) and create a project: name shortlist-demo, Postgres 17, region AWS Asia Pacific (Singapore) (next to the Render region below).
On the project dashboard, open Connect. Choose the default branch and database, turn Connection pooling off (the app's job queue needs a direct connection), and copy the connection string. It looks like postgresql://neondb_owner:…@ep-….ap-southeast-1.aws.neon.tech/neondb?sslmode=require.

That's all on Neon. The app creates its tables on first start, and Neon suspends the database when idle (the first request after a while takes a second or two longer).

2. Render: the app

Sign up at render.com with GitHub, and allow it access to the shortlist repository.
New → Web Service → pick the shortlist repo. Then:
- Name: shortlist-app-demo (the public demo runs at https://shortlist-app-demo.onrender.com; with another name, use the address Render shows you everywhere below)
- Region: Singapore · Branch: main · Language/Runtime: Docker (detected from the Dockerfile)
- Instance type: Free
Advanced → Docker Command:
```
node apps/api/dist/scripts/start.js
```
Exactly that, with no sh -c or quotes (Render runs the field as a plain command). Free instances have no pre-deploy step, so start.js migrates, rebuilds the fictional data (because DEMO_MODE=true) and then starts the server, on every start; this also keeps the demo's dates current.
Advanced → Health Check Path: /api/health

Environment variables:

Key	Value
`NODE_ENV`	`production`
`SERVE_WEB`	`true`
`DEMO_MODE`	`true`
`SIGNUP_MODE`	`closed`
`TRUST_PROXY`	`3` (requests pass Cloudflare, then Render's balancer)
`FEATURE_EMAIL_INTAKE`	`false`
`DATABASE_POOL_MAX`	`5`
`APP_ORIGIN`	`https://shortlist-app-demo.onrender.com`
`DATABASE_URL`	the Neon connection string from step 1
`ENCRYPTION_KEYS`	`demo:<a new key>`; generate one with `node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(32).toString('base64'))"`. Never reuse another instance's key.
`ENCRYPTION_ACTIVE_KEY_ID`	`demo`

Set nothing else: no AI keys, no IMAP, no SMTP.

Create Web Service. The first build takes a few minutes.

The repo also has a render.yaml Blueprint with the same settings (New → Blueprint), if you prefer that to clicking through.

The seed refuses to run on a database holding any non-demo account, so pointing the demo at a real database by mistake fails safely.

3. Check it

https://shortlist-app-demo.onrender.com/api/config → "demo": true
https://shortlist-app-demo.onrender.com/api/health/request → "protocol": "https", and ip is your own public IP (if it shows a 10.x or Cloudflare address, adjust TRUST_PROXY)
The page shows Try the demo, and inside, a "Demo · fictional data, read-only" bar.
Changing a status shows "This is a read-only demo…".
After 15+ minutes without visits, the website's demo link shows "Waking up the demo…" and then opens it.

If you use a different address, set it in site/config.json (demoUrl) so the website's demo link points at it.

Run it locally

createdb jobtracker_demo   # or via docker exec … psql
DATABASE_URL=postgres://…/jobtracker_demo DEMO_MODE=true pnpm db:migrate
DATABASE_URL=postgres://…/jobtracker_demo DEMO_MODE=true pnpm --filter @jt/api demo:seed

Then start the server with the same two variables (plus SERVE_WEB=true after pnpm build).