The 10-point checklist before your AI app goes live

The AI gave you something that looks finished. It runs, the screen loads, the button clicks. But "works in the demo" and "survives real users" are two different worlds — and the AI rarely warns you about the distance between them.

This is the checklist we run on every AI-built app before we let it go to production.

Before you go live

• Secrets — no API keys in the code; everything in environment variables.
• Authentication — routes actually protected, not just hidden in the UI.
• Input validation — every user input is checked on the server.
• Error handling — nothing takes down the whole screen on the first surprise.
• Database — parameterized queries, never string concatenation.
• Tests — the critical paths have automated tests.
• Deployment — reproducible CI/CD, not a manual upload.
• Monitoring — you find out when something breaks in production.
• Backups — customer data can be restored.
• Performance — the page stays fast under real traffic.

If any of these gave you pause, that's exactly where we come in. Send us your repo and we'll tell you what stands between it and production.