Insights / AI apps
Built your app with an AI tool? Check these six things before launch
Tools like Lovable, Bolt and Base44 get you to a working demo quickly. These are the gaps that tend to show up when real users arrive.
AI app builders are very good at getting you from an idea to something you can click through. That first version is useful, and it is also a demo. The distance between a demo and something safe to put in front of customers is mostly made of the six things below.
1. Who can see whose data
Sign up as two different users and try to view the other one's records, including by changing the ID in the address bar. Many generated apps check that you are logged in but not that the record is yours. If your app uses a hosted database, look for the access rules on each table and confirm they are switched on.
2. Secret keys in the wrong place
Keys for payments, email and AI services must stay on the server. If one is included in the code that runs in the browser, anyone can read it and use it at your expense. Search your project for the key names and check where each one is used.
3. Payments still in test mode
A checkout that works with a test card proves the screens work. It does not prove that live keys are in place, that failed payments are handled or that your app updates the order when the payment provider confirms it. Make one real purchase, then refund it.
4. What happens when something fails
Turn off your connection halfway through a form. Submit it empty. Upload a file that is too large. A demo assumes everything goes right. A real app needs a clear message for the user and a record of the error for you.
5. Where it lives
A preview link from the builder is not hosting. Before launch you want the app on your own domain, on hosting you control, with the settings for each environment stored properly and backups of the database running on a schedule.
6. The phone
Builders are usually used on a wide screen, and so the app is designed for one. Go through every screen on a phone. Tables, long forms and pop-up windows are where layouts tend to break.
Fix it or rebuild it?
Usually fix. If the screens and the flow are right, the work is tightening access rules, moving secrets, wiring payments and deploying properly. A rebuild is only worth it when the data structure itself is wrong, because everything else sits on top of that.