Your AI-built app is 80% done. We finish the last 20%.
You built it with Lovable, Bolt, Replit or Cursor, and it demos fine. Real users, real data and real payments are another story. Our product-minded AI engineers audit your vibe-coded app, fix what blocks launch, and hand back something you can put customers on.
Or read the production checklist first.
Sound familiar?
These are the walls we see again and again in apps built with AI tools.
- Your Supabase tables are open, or you have never checked whether they are. An API key may be sitting in the front-end code or the repo.
- Login works for you. Roles and permissions fall apart as soon as a second kind of user shows up.
- There are no tests. You find bugs when a user emails you.
- It breaks on edge cases: an empty field, a double click, a user in another time zone.
- When something fails, the screen goes blank and nothing tells you why.
- Stripe is half-wired. Checkout works, but webhooks, refunds and failed renewals do not.
- Deploys are chaos. Env vars live in someone's head, and staging is the same thing as production.
- Every fix breaks something else, and the AI keeps rewriting files you never asked it to touch.
Why AI-built apps stall at 80%
were happy path
AI tools are built to make the demo work. A demo is the happy path: one user, clean data, everything goes right.
When a second model designed the test cases for QueueMate, only 49 of 554 were happy path. The other 91% were edge, negative, boundary, security and concurrency cases. Real users live there.
Prompting the tool again does not close that gap, because the tool never saw those cases. Someone has to go looking for them. Read: how we test AI-generated code before it ships →
The two-week finish trial
This is our existing paid two-week trial, applied to rescue work. It is short, it is paid, and there is no long-term commitment.
- Days 1 to 2
Audit and finish plan
We read your code and use the app the way a hostile user would. We check security and data access (Supabase RLS, exposed keys), auth, tests, error handling, deploy and env setup, and cost. You get a written finish plan: what blocks launch, what can wait, and in what order.
- Days 3 to 10
Fix the launch blockers
We work in your repo, in small steps, and you see every change. We close the access holes, fix auth, wire payments properly and add error handling. Then we write tests built to break it. A second model designs them, the same way we test our own products.
- Days 11 to 14
Production launch and handover
We deploy to production with proper environments. You get docs, a runbook, and a list of what to fix next. Your team, or ours, can take it from there.
Same managed team as the rest of First Mate's work: led from San Francisco, engineers in Manila, 4 to 5 hours of daily overlap with U.S. East Coast time.
We build with AI, then try to break it
The rescue process is the one we use on our own products.
QueueMate
A free restaurant queue system we built in days in June 2026. Agents tested it throughout development. Then a second model wrote the tests that try to break it, and every defect was filed before a single fix.
- test cases
- 554
- defects filed
- 38
- happy path
- 49
StampMate
One engineer, six specialized AI agents, one working MVP. Scoped user flows, small milestones, and a human checkpoint at every step. That is how we keep AI speed without the mess.
Read: how one engineer built a full MVP with a team of AI agents →What you get
- A written audit and finish plan, ranked by launch risk
- Fixes for security and data access: RLS, exposed keys, permissions
- Working auth and role checks
- Payments and webhooks wired the right way, if you take payments
- Error handling and error tracking
- Automated tests for the edge cases, including the sign-up-to-payment flow
- A production deploy with staging, env vars and migrations sorted
- Docs, a runbook, and a prioritized list of what to fix next
Vibe Code Rescue: FAQ
Do you rewrite everything?
No. We keep what works and fix what blocks launch. A rewrite is only on the table if the audit shows the foundation cannot be saved, and we say so in the written plan before you spend more.
Which tools do you work with?
Apps built with Lovable, Bolt, Replit, Cursor, v0 or similar tools. We work on the code they produce, usually a React front end with Supabase or a similar back end. If it lives in a Git repo, we can read it.
Do I need to give you access?
Yes: the repo, plus your hosting and database dashboards, so we can see how the app is deployed and who can read your data. You can start with access for the audit and widen it when you approve the plan.
What if it's not worth saving?
Then we say so in the audit, in writing, and tell you what to rebuild and in what order. Better to hear that in two days than after a month of patches.
What happens after two weeks?
You decide. Take the handover and run it yourself, keep working with us on the next items on the list, or move into an ongoing embedded team. There is no long-term commitment.
Is the trial paid?
Yes. It is the same paid two-week trial most engagements start with, applied to rescue work. We go through the terms on the review call.
Find out what stands between your app and launch.
Thirty minutes, free. Bring the app and we will tell you what we see.
Start your two-week trial.
No long-term commitment. Most engagements start with a low-risk trial. Prefer to talk first? Reach us directly.
