Hello folks first-time Ory user here. I'm trying to figure out how to run Ory without the commercial product (Ory network) until I get to later production phases. The docs always explain that you need to create a project on the network. What do I do when I self-host on localhost or my own cloud?

You probably need to clarify which Ory product you want to host. In any case: self hosting docs can be found here https://www.ory.sh/docs/ecosystem/projects

If your intent is to go with Ory Network later, why not create a free Developer account to start? It would be a lot of wasted work to self-host each individual tool and build a UI just to replace it all with Ory Network later

I work in a SaaS company, we have an auth stack and I want to slowly replace it with a more modern stack like Ory. I have custom UIs and a lot of things in place. Kratos/Hydra/Oauthleeper are the things that interest me the most. In production, I want to use the SaaS for support and mitigating misconfiguration and security issues. Self-hosted makes sense on lower testing environments/e2e/local dev etc. Areas I'm trying to figure out: • How to cater to those lower envs - better ways? just have accounts for them all? just for that test running on a PR? • How do you handle initial user provision from our custom db to Kratos and keep a good separation between the user auth aspect in business aspects.