Vibe-Coded an App? Run This Launch-Readiness Checklist First

AI coding tools have changed who gets to build software. People with no formal engineering background are shipping working products, and that's genuinely great. But there's a gap between "it works on my machine" and "it's live on the App Store handling real users' data", and that gap is where launches die.

This is the checklist we run when someone brings us a vibe-coded app and says: get this live.

1. Secrets and keys

The single most common problem we find. API keys pasted into frontend code, database credentials in the repo, admin endpoints with no auth. Anyone can read your app's client code. Assume they will.

• No secrets in client code or git history
• Every API endpoint checks who's asking
• Database rules deny by default

2. The unhappy paths

AI-generated code is optimistic: it handles the demo flow beautifully and falls over on everything else. What happens when the network drops mid-payment? When two users edit the same record? When someone types an emoji into the phone-number field? Production is nothing but unhappy paths.

3. Data protection

If South Africans use your app, POPIA applies to you, solo founder or not. You need a privacy policy that matches what the app actually does, a lawful basis for what you collect, and a way to delete a user's data when they ask. App Store and Play Store reviewers check for the policy; the Information Regulator checks for the rest.

4. Performance at scale

The difference between 10 users and 10,000 is not linear. Unindexed database queries, images served at full resolution, everything loading on launch: fine in testing, fatal in production. A load test costs an afternoon and saves a launch-day meltdown.

5. Store readiness

Both stores reject far more apps than founders expect. The usual reasons are boring: missing privacy declarations, broken sign-in-with-Apple, screenshots that don't match the app, payment flows that bypass store billing rules. Each rejection costs you a week of review queue.

6. The marketing you forgot

A launch isn't just code. Before you ship you want: a landing page that explains the product in one sentence, store listings written for search (ASO is real), analytics wired in so you can see what users actually do, and a way to capture the people who almost convert.

The honest question

Can you do all of this yourself? Probably, with enough weeks of research. The real question is whether those weeks are the best use of the momentum you've built.

This is exactly what our Launch Readiness service does: we audit your code, security, performance, and marketing top to bottom, fix what's broken, and handle App Store and Google Play submission with you. You built the thing. We'll get it launched.