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AI-built prototype to production — launch in three weeks

SaaS founder, pre-revenue · Technology

A founder had a working prototype built in Cursor — demo-ready but nowhere near production. Exposed API keys in repo, no CI/CD, Supabase RLS untested, and a launch date already promised to early customers.

The problem

The app worked on localhost. Production hosting, environment separation, secrets management, database backups, and basic security were all missing. Founder was one bad deploy away from a public incident.

Constraints

  • Launch date in three weeks — non-negotiable
  • Limited budget — pre-revenue
  • Must pass basic security review for first enterprise pilot

Approach

  1. Step 1

    Readiness audit

    Code and architecture review — auth, RLS policies, secrets, dependencies, and deployment gaps ranked by launch blocker severity.

  2. Step 2

    Pipeline & hosting

    GitHub Actions CI/CD, staging and production environments, GCP/Supabase hosting, domain and SSL, environment variable management.

  3. Step 3

    Security pass

    Automated scan plus manual review of auth boundaries and RLS. Critical findings remediated before go-live.

Deliverables

  • Production deployment on agreed stack
  • CI/CD pipeline with staging gate
  • Secrets removed from codebase
  • Security findings report + fixes
  • Launch runbook and handover

Results

Time to live
Production in 3 weeks from audit start
Security
Critical RLS and auth issues closed pre-launch
Enterprise pilot
Passed customer security questionnaire
Founder focus
Back on product — not firefighting infra

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