Most products ask for an email address before they have given anything back. The visitor arrives curious, meets a signup form, and many leave without ever seeing what the product does.

The anonymous first task flips that order. The visitor does one useful thing straight away, with no account, and sees a real result. The signup prompt appears only when they want to keep it, and when they register, the result is already in their account.

The idea and why it grows users

The current angle comes from identity infrastructure. On 26 October, Auth0's changelog listed its Identity Conversion Suite as entering Early Access, bundling two pieces: Anonymous Sessions, which keeps a visitor's session context before they sign up or log in, and Experiment Center, which A/B tests login and signup flows. Earlier in the month, Auth0 described Anonymous Sessions as a way to carry a visitor's cart, preferences and browsing context "straight into their new account".

Auth0 frames it around checkout: its September announcement cites Baymard research that 18% of shoppers who quit a checkout did so because they were forced to create an account. Auth0 has published no conversion results for the feature, so any lift is yours to measure.

For a SaaS or AI product, the cart is the first output. The play grows users two ways: it converts more visitors, because the ask becomes "keep what you just made", and shared results bring new visitors to the same front door.

Who it's for

  • AI tools where the first prompt shows the value

  • Utilities with a single clear output: audits, calculators, generators

  • Solo builders who rely on landing-page traffic and can't afford to waste it

What you need

  • Auth that supports anonymous users. Supabase has built-in anonymous sign-ins; Auth0's suite is, as of 29 October 2026, a paid add-on for Enterprise plans. A signed cookie plus a server-side guest row also works.

  • Abuse controls: CAPTCHA or Cloudflare Turnstile, rate limits and a cap on anonymous compute.

  • Analytics that can join pre-signup events to the eventual account.

  • Time and cost: two to five days on a modern auth provider; the main cost is compute given to visitors who never sign up.

How this grows users

  1. A visitor lands from search, a social post or a shared result.

  2. They start the task immediately. No form, so more of them begin.

  3. They get a real result, shown in full.

  4. They want to keep it: save, edit later or export.

  5. They sign up to keep it, arriving already activated.

  6. Optionally, they share the result. The shared page shows the output and a "Make your own" button that drops the viewer into step 2.

Steps one to five convert more of your existing traffic; step six brings in new traffic.

Illustrative maths (an example, not results):

  • Gated flow: 10,000 monthly visitors × 4% complete the signup form = 400 signups. If 50% of those reach a first result, that's 200 activated users.

  • Anonymous flow: 10,000 visitors × 25% start the task = 2,500 × 60% complete it = 1,500 results × 20% sign up to save = 300 signups, all of whom have already reached a first result.

  • Share loop on top: 1,500 results × 5% shared × 4 views each = 300 new visits × 25% start × 60% complete × 20% save ≈ 9 extra users a month.

In this made-up example, raw signups fall while activated users rise by half, and the share loop grows with every saved result. Your numbers will differ, so measure them.

How to measure it:

  • Give every anonymous visitor an ID on first action and log task_started, task_completed and save_prompt_shown against it.

  • Record signup_source = save_result (versus nav_signup) on the new account, plus referrer and UTM parameters captured at first touch.

  • Add a ref=shared_result&rid=<result_id> parameter to every shared link so you can credit new users to the result that brought them in.

  • Track carry-over success: results claimed / results created by visitors who signed up.

  • Run it as a split test against your gated flow. Auth0's Experiment Center keeps each visitor in one variant for the whole journey; with your own feature flag, make sure you do the same.

Step-by-step

  1. Choose the first task. Pick the smallest job, under two minutes, that produces something the visitor would hate to lose. "Paste your URL, get five rewritten headlines" beats "explore the dashboard".

  2. Create an anonymous identity on first action, not on page load. In Supabase that's supabase.auth.signInAnonymously(). Anonymous users carry an is_anonymous claim you can use in row-level security, as Supabase's launch post shows.

  3. Store the result against that ID with a clear expiry. Supabase has no automatic clean-up of anonymous users, so schedule a job to delete ones older than 30 days, and tell visitors how long work is kept.

  4. Put the save prompt at the moment of value. Show it beside the finished result. Signing up links an identity to the same user (updateUser({ email }) or linkIdentity() for Google), and Supabase says the user ID remains the same, so the result stays put.

  5. Handle existing accounts. If the email already exists, Supabase's anonymous sign-in docs say conflicts need manual handling: sign the person in and reassign the anonymous result to their real account.

  6. Protect your costs. Turn on invisible CAPTCHA or Turnstile, keep the IP rate limit (Supabase's default is 30 anonymous sign-in requests per hour) and cap anonymous AI usage at one or two runs.

  7. Add the share link, with a public result page that names your product, shows the output cleanly and offers "Make your own".

Template / copy / example

Save prompt, beside the result:

"This draft is yours. Create a free account to save it, edit it later and export it. Takes 20 seconds."

Buttons: "Save with Google" / "Save with email" / "Not now"

Expiry notice, small print under the result:

"We keep unsaved results for 30 days, then delete them."

Shared result page footer:

"Made with [Product]. Make your own, no account needed."

Worked example: an AI tool that rewrites landing-page copy. Visitors paste a URL and get five headlines with reasons, then the save prompt. Sign up, and the headlines sit in their first project. Share, and the recipient sees the before-and-after and a box for their own URL.

For the next step after signup, pair this with a proactive first message that picks up from the saved result.

Metrics to watch

  • Task start and completion rates

  • Save-signup rate (signups from the save prompt / completed results)

  • Activated users per 1,000 visitors, gated versus anonymous

  • New users per shared result

  • Anonymous compute cost per signup

  • 30-day retention of save-signup versus form-signup users

Pitfalls

  • Holding the result hostage. The user-value test: the visitor sees the complete result before any signup ask. Blurring half of it or blocking the copy button is a dark pattern.

  • Losing the work at signup. If the account opens empty, you have broken the promise that got them to register. Test the conflict path for existing emails.

  • Uncapped compute. Anonymous AI usage invites scripts. Cap runs and watch cost per signup weekly.

  • Forced branding on shared pages. A shared result page can carry a "Make your own" link, but paying users should be able to remove it.

  • Over-permissive access. Don't let anonymous users message others or post publicly; use the anonymous flag in your access rules.

  • Misreading the numbers. Judge it on activated and retained users, not raw signups.

Variations

  • Magic-link claim: ask for an email only, send a link that claims the result, with no password.

  • Credit hand-off: carry any unused anonymous runs into the account as a small welcome balance, in the spirit of an AI credits programme.

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