Safe Local Testing

Mike is a young open-source legal AI project. Until you have reviewed your deployment and data flows, test it with disposable infrastructure and synthetic documents only.

Use Disposable Test Resources

Create separate test resources for Mike:

a throwaway Supabase project
a throwaway S3-compatible storage bucket, such as Cloudflare R2
disposable model-provider API keys with low spending limits
a test email account

Do not use production Supabase projects, production storage buckets, firm API keys, or real client documents for initial testing.

Keep Secrets Out of the Frontend

Only variables prefixed with NEXT_PUBLIC_ should be assumed safe to expose to the browser. Service-role keys and model-provider keys should stay server-side.

For frontend testing, frontend/.env.local should normally contain only:

NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL=https://your-project.supabase.co
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_DEFAULT_KEY=your-supabase-anon-key
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:3001

Keep the Supabase service-role key in backend/.env only:

SUPABASE_SECRET_KEY=your-supabase-service-role-key

Model-provider keys such as ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY, and OPENROUTER_API_KEY should also stay in backend/.env.

Test With Synthetic Documents

Use fake or public sample documents when testing:

synthetic NDAs
sample contracts
public court documents
dummy PDF/DOCX files

Do not upload privileged, confidential, client, matter, personnel, or firm knowledge-management material until you are comfortable with the deployment's storage, logging, deletion, and model-provider behavior.

Confirm Environment Files Are Not Tracked

Before running or committing changes, check:

git status --short

Stop if .env, .env.local, or any file containing secrets appears in the output.

Start With Non-LLM Flows

If you do not want to use model-provider keys yet, use dummy provider values and test only the non-LLM flows first:

account creation against a test Supabase project
project creation
file upload with synthetic documents
folder organization
document deletion

Then add one disposable, capped model-provider key and test assistant behavior with synthetic documents.

Clean Up After Testing

After testing, delete:

uploaded objects from the storage bucket
test Supabase rows or the whole test Supabase project
disposable model-provider keys
local .env files that contain secrets

For legal-document workflows, deletion semantics matter. Verify that your storage bucket no longer contains test document objects after delete flows.

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