Ship safely
Vibe Coding Production Checklist
A launch gate for AI-built apps covering accounts, data access, secrets, payments, errors, monitoring, SEO, and rollback.
Do not launch because the happy path worked once. Verify who can access each action, where secrets run, how data is protected, what happens on failure, and how you will detect and reverse a bad release.
Builders preparing to publish an AI-generated website or app for real users, accounts, payments, or customer data.
What is changing now
Production agent platforms increasingly add approvals, sandboxes, durable execution, telemetry, and security scanning. These controls exist because generated code still needs operational boundaries and evidence.
Problems this guide solves
- Admin keys, API tokens, or private data are available to browser code.
- The app has authentication but does not enforce ownership on server-side data access.
- There is no alert or rollback plan when a generated change fails after launch.
Step 1
Lock down identity, data, and secrets
Login is only the first layer. Every sensitive action needs server-side authorization.
- Test signed-out, normal-user, wrong-account, and admin access separately.
- Enforce record ownership or role checks on the server and database, not only in the interface.
- Keep privileged keys on the server and scan the built client files for leaked values.
- Limit uploads, validate file types, and avoid storing sensitive data you do not need.
Step 2
Test failure and abuse paths
Real users double-click, lose connections, submit bad data, and find limits.
- Validate input on the server and return useful errors without exposing internals.
- Add rate limits to login, email, payment, generation, and public write endpoints.
- Make payment and webhook handling idempotent so retries do not duplicate work.
- Test empty states, slow requests, provider failure, and expired sessions.
Step 3
Prepare operations and discovery
A launch needs monitoring, recovery, and pages people and search engines can understand.
- Add error monitoring, basic analytics, uptime checks, and a way for users to report problems.
- Back up important data and rehearse restoring or rolling back one change.
- Set unique titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, crawlable internal links, robots rules, and a clean sitemap.
- Publish ownership, privacy, and contact information appropriate to the product.
Final checklist
- Authorization is tested for signed-out, wrong-account, and admin users.
- Secrets and privileged keys stay out of browser code.
- Server input validation and rate limits protect write actions.
- Payments and webhooks handle retries safely.
- Errors, uptime, and important user actions are observable.
- Backups and rollback have been tested.
- Titles, canonical URLs, internal links, robots, and sitemap agree.
- Privacy, ownership, and contact information are published.
Common questions
Is a successful deployment enough to launch?
No. A successful build proves the files compiled. It does not prove authorization, data ownership, failure handling, monitoring, or recovery.
What should I check first on an AI-built app?
Check secrets and server-side authorization first. These failures can expose accounts or data even when the interface appears to work.
Do public content sites need this whole checklist?
Use the parts that match the risk. A static content site still needs links, forms, metadata, monitoring, and rollback, but it may not need account or payment checks.
Sources and further reading
These primary sources support the current direction described in this guide. Product features can change, so verify controls in the tool before adopting them.
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