10 June 2026 · 5 min read
Cursor, Lovable, and Bolt get you to demo fast — but customers and investors ask different questions. A practical pre-launch checklist for vibe-coded apps going to production.
AI coding tools changed how fast founders and internal teams can build software. They did not change what production requires: authentication that holds up, secrets that stay out of the repo, backups that exist, and a deploy path that is not "SSH and hope."
The gap between "works on my machine" and "ready for paying customers" is where most AI-built prototypes stall. This article summarises the highest-leverage checks; the full 25-item PDF goes deeper on security, CI/CD, and ops.
AI-generated code often skips row-level security, exposes admin routes, or hardcodes API keys in frontend bundles. Run an automated scan plus a manual pass on auth boundaries before you invite external users.
If you are selling to other businesses, assume their IT team will ask about data isolation, HTTPS, and access control. Secure gives you a prioritised findings report ranked by business risk — not fear-mongering.
Production, staging, and development should be separate — with environment variables documented and no manual prod-only tweaks. A one-click deploy from a tagged release beats copying files to a server.
Ship exists for teams stuck here: production hosting on GCP, Supabase, or Vercel, domain and SSL, CI/CD baseline, and handover documentation so you get back to product work.
If your app stores customer data, you need automated backups, a tested restore, and a clear answer on where data lives (region, provider, retention).
Database migrations should be version-controlled. Connection pooling and timeouts matter once you have more than a handful of concurrent users — a surprise many demo-grade stacks hit on launch week.
Error tracking and uptime checks are not optional for a customer-facing launch. You want to know when the app breaks before your first user emails you.
Walk through a launch smoke test on the production URL: signup, core workflow, payment if applicable, and logout. Document the runbook so you are not the only person who can deploy a fix.
