Thanks for the feedback! There's definitely a lot of ways we can do this, and each has tradeoffs. One tradeoff that came up when we tried to switch to public-only authentication first is that the login button needed to have different scopes - and apparently a lot of people try to sign up via that button.
I agree that we need more warning with the SSH keys. I'll try to figure out where to put that - we used to warn in a previous iteration, but we're moving very quickly and some things get lost sometimes (especially with A/B tests). We're doing a lot of work to provide user education around what they should expect from Circle, so that's definitely a must-have. Thanks!
I wasn't judging you guys on the 'pictures' at all. :) Was just giving some candid feedback from my experience. I actually signed up write after I wrote that, and was going to post again once I'd had a chance to try it.
I did get to try it briefly and I actually think the UI, while simple, is better than the other (albeit much more complex) solutions I've been looking at.
>FYI: we hate the "write to my private repos" thing too, but with GitHub's permissions model there isn't a better alternative (there are alternatives, they're all bad).
IMO, this would be a big improvement and is doable: let me sign up (still via GitHub auth) without asking for the repo or user scopes. Then have a call-to-action that upgrades the token, as part of the guided welcome into Manage Repos. [I realize this could hurt your funnel, perhaps offer this path buried in the FAQ somewhere if that's a concern]
If you pass nothing for the scope param to the GitHub API, that gives you the authentication piece with read-only access to the user's public stuff. Then just add a "Hey, we can only see your public repos by default - click here [..]" that sends them into the web flow again with the additional scopes, to upgrade your auth token.
Also, while I'm giving unsolicited advice :) - it may be obvious, but letting the user know that when they follow a repo (and just doing this on the first repo they use would be fine) that you're going to add an SSH key would probably be a good addition. Since adding a deploy key sends an email to all admins of the organization, some users might want to give people a heads-up they're trying out Circle.
. . .
Anyway, Circle looks great already and I'm eager to see what other stuff you guys have in store. I'll certainly be using it for some of my projects.