How to Make a Vibe-Coded App Production-Ready

AI builders like Lovable, Bolt, v0, Cursor, Replit, Claude Code and Codex get you to a working prototype faster than ever. Getting from "it works on my screen" to "real users can trust it" is a different job. Here is the short version of the checklist we use.

1. Lock down secrets and data

• Move every API key out of the frontend and into server-side environment variables.
• Turn on row-level security (or the equivalent) so each user can only read and write their own data.
• Check that admin pages and internal endpoints are not reachable without a login.

2. Make login and payments boring

• Test sign-up, login, password reset and logout on a fresh account.
• Handle payment webhooks on the server and make them safe to receive twice.
• Try a failed card and a refund before a real customer does.

3. Stop one prompt from breaking the rest

• Put the code in Git and work on branches, not straight on the live app.
• Add a few tests for the flows that make you money: sign-up, checkout, the core feature.
• Review agent-written changes before they ship, the way you would review a teammate's.

4. Make it fast and visible

• Compress images and split large bundles so the first page loads quickly.
• If it is a single-page app, prerender the public pages so Google and AI assistants can read them.
• Give every page its own title, description and canonical URL.

5. Deploy on purpose

• One command or one button to deploy, and a way to roll back.
• Error monitoring and basic analytics, so you hear about problems before users tell you.
• Backups for the database, tested at least once.

Keep, fix or rebuild?

Most stuck apps do not need to start over. The first step is knowing which parts are solid, which need fixing and which really should be rebuilt. That is exactly what our production-readiness audit answers, for $1,500, credited toward the fix plan if you continue.