[BUG] Setting "DISABLE_AUTH=true" in docker-compose.local.yml produces empty /workspace page

Describe the bug
I've modified docker-compose.local.yml to specify - DISABLE_AUTH=true for all services. The login page is bypassed which is awesome, but the page the browser goes to (<host>/workspace) is just an empty page. There is HTML being downloaded with body, header, and script blocks, but there are also  and  which are presumably placeholder markers for generated content (but I could be wrong).

To Reproduce

Sync to v0.5.40 tag
Set environment variable DISABLE_AUTH to true in docker-compose.local.yml for all services
In sim/, run docker compose -f docker-compose.local.yml up -d
Open SimStudio in a browser
See blank page, look at source to see HTML

Expected behavior
Browser shows a usable page

Getting this as well.

@TechHutTV

@TechHutTV @tb10kc can you go to browser devtools > application > cookies and delete them all? and see if you still have any issues?

@waleedlatif1

@waleedlatif1 yes, even if I clear everything or new fresh installed browsers. I even nuked the database to see if me trying to create an account previously was having any effect.

Yep, still happens. Tried in Chrome after clearing cookies, and I didn't have Firefox on this particular machine so I installed it and still got a blank page.

I'd like to add that I have a separate Postgres db running and set up the connection info for all services. The db connection is valid because other services are using the same info and are functioning properly. Using pgAdmin 4, I can see that Sim Studio creates a database called simstudio and has a schema called public but no tables.

@TechHutTV

@TechHutTV @tb10kc the problem was that with DISABLE_AUTH=true, the anonymous user wasn't being created in the database because the database wasn't initialized.

To fix this: run database migrations to set up the schema
The solution was to run database migrations to set up the schema:

# Stop any running containers
docker-compose -f docker-compose.local.yml down

# Start fresh and run migrations
docker-compose -f docker-compose.local.yml up -d

# Run migrations
docker-compose -f docker-compose.local.yml exec sim bun db:push

Or if you're running locally without Docker:

# Navigate to the sim app directory
cd apps/sim

# Run database migrations
bun db:push

This creates all the necessary database tables including the user table that's needed for the anonymous session. The ECONNREFUSED error in console you're seeing means PostgreSQL isn't running or isn't accessible.

I tried this on v0.5.57 today running docker compose -f docker-compose.local.yml exec sim bun db:push but that doesn't work:

WARN[0000] The "COPILOT_API_KEY" variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string. 
WARN[0000] The "SIM_AGENT_API_URL" variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string. 
error: Script not found "db:push"

Has there been any luck on this bug? I would love to try out Sim Studio and this is the only thing preventing me from checking it out.

fix(auth): make DISABLE_AUTH work in web app

fix(auth): make DISABLE_AUTH work in web app (#3297)

fix(auth): make DISABLE_AUTH work in web app (simstudioai#3297)

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[BUG] Setting "DISABLE_AUTH=true" in docker-compose.local.yml produces empty /workspace page #2524

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[BUG] Setting "DISABLE_AUTH=true" in docker-compose.local.yml produces empty /workspace page #2524

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TechHutTV commented on Dec 23, 2025

waleedlatif1 commented on Dec 23, 2025

TechHutTV commented on Dec 23, 2025

tb10kc commented on Dec 23, 2025

Chadha93 commented on Jan 4, 2026

tb10kc commented on Jan 12, 2026

tb10kc commented on Jan 20, 2026

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