the door is yours to open.
Your site has a members area at /party: each member's activity, their photos, their progress. Anyone can sign up, but signing up does not get them in. They join your waitlist by answering a short worksheet about the problem they are working on, and they stay outside until you approve them. You already walked through this door in Make yourself admin. This step is about opening it for everyone else.
| Who | Gets into /party |
|---|---|
| You, and anyone with role: admin | Always |
| Someone you approved | Yes, from their next sign-in |
| Someone who signed up and is waiting | No. They see where they stand on the waitlist |
| A visitor who is not signed in | No. They are asked to sign in |
✓ Success: someone you approved can open /party.
this is a work in progress
1️⃣ Join Your Own Waitlist
The best way to understand it is to be a visitor once. Open your site in a private browser window, so you are signed out, and sign up with a second email address:
- Click sign-in and choose Sign up. After signing up, your site takes you straight to the worksheet at /waitlist/apply
- Fill it in: an email, a name, the idea's name, a target date, and a few questions about the problem. Submit it
- Open /party. Instead of the members area, you land on /waitlist/pending, which says You're on the list.
- That page is where every waiting visitor ends up. It shows their status, and lets them update their worksheet while they wait
| Their status | What /waitlist/pending says |
|---|---|
| Waiting | You're on the list., with a button to update their worksheet |
| Approved | You're in, with a button to go to /party |
| Not approved | Problem not compatible, with a button to update and resubmit |
| No worksheet yet | You're not on the waitlist yet, with a button to start one |
2️⃣ Approve Them
Go back to your normal window, where you are signed in as yourself. Every worksheet waits for you in one list:
- Open localhost:3000/admin/submissions
- Each row is one worksheet, newest first, marked PENDING. Read what they wrote
- Click Approve to let them in, or Reject to say not this time
- The row turns APPROVED. Behind the scenes your site also labels their account waitlistStatus: approved, the label the door actually checks
Rejecting is not final. They see Problem not compatible with a button to update and resubmit, and a resubmitted worksheet comes back to your list as a new row.
🔑 Or Let Someone In Directly
Sometimes you want to let in a friend, a partner or a customer who never filled in a worksheet. Give their account the label yourself, on the same screen where you made yourself admin:
- In your Clerk dashboard, open Users and click the person
- Scroll to Metadata and click Edit next to Public
- Add the line below. If something is already there, keep it and add a comma before the new line
- Click Save
{
"waitlistStatus": "approved"
}3️⃣ They Sign In, They Are In
Your site reads the label when someone signs in, so a person who was already signed in may still be sent to the waitlist for a moment. In your private window:
- Open /waitlist/pending. It now says You're in
- Click Go to /party. If it sends you back to the waitlist, sign out and sign in again
- /party opens: the members area, with MY PHOTOS. and their activity
“Anyone can knock. You choose who comes in.”
— unparty-app
⚠️ Good to Know
- Nobody is told by email yet — approving someone does not email them until you set up email, a later optional step. Until then, tell them yourself, or let them find You're in on their next visit
- Editing a worksheet adds a row — if someone updates their worksheet while waiting, a second row appears in your list. Approve either one; both let them in
- Your photo prompts wait for approval too — visitors can answer Photo prompts before they are approved. Their photos appear under MY PHOTOS. in /party once you let them in
- The live site shares the list — your computer and your live site use one database, so approving on either one works on both
🐙 Later: Review in GitHub
unparty reviews its own waitlist in GitHub Discussions: every worksheet opens a discussion in a Pending category, and moving it to Approve lets the person in, the same as the button. Your copy can do the same once your site is connected to GitHub, which the GitHub repo discovery step sets up. It is optional; the button does everything on its own.
🧯 If Something Is Off
- You approved them, but /party still sends them to the waitlist — they need to sign out and in again. If that does not help, open them in Clerk: Public metadata should show "waitlistStatus": "approved". If it does not, add it by hand as above
- Even you are sent to the waitlist — your admin label is missing, or the session token from Add sign-in is not set. See Make yourself admin
- /admin/submissions is empty — no one has submitted a worksheet yet, or you are signed in as your test account. Sign in as yourself
- Approve and Reject are missing on a row — they only appear on rows marked PENDING
🤖 Ask Your LLM
Here are the worksheets waiting on my waitlist: [paste them].
My site is for [describe who it is for]. Which of these fit best,
and what one question would you ask each person before approving?
Someone says they were approved but cannot open /party on my
site. Walk me through what to check in Clerk, step by step.✅ You Are Done When
- Your test account signed up, filled in the worksheet, and saw You're on the list.
- Its row appeared in /admin/submissions, and you approved it
- After signing in again, your test account opened /party
- You know how to let someone in straight from Clerk
Your members area is no longer just yours. You decide who joins it, one worksheet at a time, and everyone who is waiting knows exactly where they stand.
“A waitlist is a promise: we read every one.”
— unparty-app