Lovable, Bolt, v0, Cursor, Replit and Base44 rescue
It looked finished.
Then production found it.
This is where you fix an AI-generated app that is failing in production — broken payments, missing records, dead webhooks, unreliable auth — whichever tool generated it. If it is 2am and a customer just paid for something your app cannot find, start here.
The 48-hour rescue audit
A written diagnosis before another developer starts guessing
You do not need a vague call where someone says the code is bad. You need evidence, a risk order, and a price you can decide against. Your first audit costs nothing and the report is yours to keep whether or not you hire us.
- 48-hour written technical report
- The flow that is losing you money, replayed on your live app
- Which parts of the codebase can stay, and which are load-bearing but unsafe
- Missing constraints, duplicate writes and rows nothing can reconcile
- Row level security and server-side permission checks, table by table
- One real payment traced from checkout session to database write
- Environment variables, domains and build settings compared against the preview
- Every secret in the repository, and which of them to rotate today
- Keep, repair, or rebuild recommendation
- Fixed quote for the agreed rescue scope
The two failures we see most
The payment succeeds. The product still fails.
Stripe charges the card. No order exists.
The checkout page reports success, but the backend never records the purchase. The user is charged, support has no order, and retrying can create a second charge. We trace checkout, webhook verification, idempotency, database writes, and reconciliation as one path.
The webhook died silently three days ago.
A provider changed an event, a secret expired, or the endpoint began returning 500. Nothing alerted you. Subscriptions, emails, and account access drift out of sync. We add visible failure handling, replay support, logging, and alerts so the same bug does not hide again.
What we inspect
The parts AI builders make easy to start and hard to finish
Lovable, Bolt and v0 will get you a convincing product surface in a weekend. Everything that decides whether it survives a paying customer sits behind it.
Payments
One real charge followed through checkout session, webhook signature, idempotency key and the database write. The break is almost always at one of those four boundaries.
Authentication
Sessions, OAuth callbacks and protected routes, checked on the server rather than in the interface. If the API answers without a session, the login screen is decoration.
Data integrity
Missing constraints, duplicate writes, migrations nobody ran. We look for the rows two systems disagree about, because support finds those first.
Backend behaviour
Timeouts, unhandled third-party failures, and try/catch blocks that swallow the error to keep the screen looking healthy.
Production setup
Environment variables, domains and build settings that differ between the preview you tested and the host your customers hit.
Security
Exposed keys, admin actions with no server-side check, and database access that trusts whatever the browser sends.
Rescue process
From 'the app is broken' to a plan with a price on it
Send access
Share the repository, live URL, failing path, and relevant service logs through a secure handoff.
We reproduce it
We replay the critical user path and follow the evidence through frontend, backend, provider, and database.
Get the report
Within 48 hours, you receive written findings, priorities, a salvage decision, and the fixed rescue quote.
Repair and prove
If you proceed, we fix in small testable slices, send a Loom every 48 hours, deploy, and monitor the repaired path.
Not every broken build came from an AI
Your developer disappeared and nobody can tell you how far along it is
Half the builds we take over were written by a person, not a prompt. The wreckage looks different — undocumented rather than unsafe — but the decision you need is the same one.
The codebase is undocumented, features that worked last month are broken now, deadlines have slipped twice, and every quote to fix it quietly assumes a full restart. Nobody will tell you plainly how much of what you paid for is real.
The audit is the same free 48 hours. We read the code and the infrastructure, and give you a blunt assessment of what works, what is broken and what is missing — then stop the critical failures before touching anything cosmetic, and tell you honestly which parts cost more to maintain than to replace.
- A written audit of the codebase as it stands, not as it was described to you
- A prioritised fix plan with effort against each item
- A stabilised, deployable build — the critical bugs and security gaps first
- Documentation of the system as it now stands
- A handover plan your team or your next developer can actually use
Keep, repair, or rebuild
We tell you which answer the evidence supports
Keep
The architecture holds. We fix the handful of failures actually breaking things and leave the rest alone.
Repair
The shape of the product is right and the money path is not. Payments, data and permissions get rewritten; the screens you already have stay.
Rebuild
The current path risks customer money or data, and repairing it would cost more than replacing the unsafe core.
If the evidence says rebuild, the quote is fixed before any code is written, and the repository and accounts are in your name from day one. A two-minute Loom every 48 hours, so you can see where it stands without asking. The repaired path gets tests around it before handover — Loopwave went out with 110 passing API integration tests. See how that one was built in the Loopwave case study.
By the tool that built it
Six tools, six different ways of breaking
Pick the one your app was built with. Each page lists the failures that recur with that tool, and what we do about them.
Fix a Lovable app
Lovable is genuinely good at producing a product surface that looks complete. What it does not give you is the part underneath: verified webhooks, enforced row level security, idempotent writes, and errors you can actually see. That is the gap almost every Lovable rescue lives in.
Fix a Bolt.new app
Bolt.new gets you to something that runs. Running is not the same as deployed: the preview hands you environment variables you never set, an origin your auth redirect will never see again, and a database nobody has locked down. Every Bolt rescue we take starts at the first real deploy.
Fix a Replit Agent app
Replit Agent is quick to something demonstrable, and the workspace covers for it: nothing has restarted yet, nothing has gone cold, and you are the only user. Persistence, process lifetime and secrets all behave differently once real traffic arrives. Most of these rescues end with a plan to migrate off Replit onto infrastructure you own.
Fix a v0 app
v0 is the best of these tools at generating a genuinely good-looking, well-structured frontend. It is also the one most likely to leave you with screens that look finished and a product that cannot store a single record.
Fix a Cursor-built codebase
Cursor is a genuinely good tool in experienced hands, which is exactly why its failure mode is different. You do not end up with a broken toy — you end up with several thousand lines of plausible code, no tests, and no one who can say with confidence what happens if you change any of it.
Fix a Base44 app
Base44 is fast at assembling something that works within its own environment. The trouble arrives at the edges: custom logic it will not express, data you need elsewhere, and the question of what you actually own.
Stop guessing at the production bug · free 48-hour written audit · fixed quote before anything is touched
Questions founders ask during an app rescue
Can you fix a Lovable, Bolt, or v0 app without rebuilding everything?
Often, yes. We first separate working parts from unsafe or incomplete parts. The audit tells you what can stay, what needs repair, and what should be rebuilt. We do not recommend a restart just because it is easier for us.
What do I receive in the free audit?
The failing flow replayed on your live app, and the evidence written down: where it breaks, what else that breakage touches, which repairs are urgent and which can wait, and whether the evidence says keep, repair, or rebuild. Then a fixed quote for the scope you agree to.
How much does the audit cost?
Your first audit is free. We look at the real thing, the live app or the repository rather than a description of it, and send back written findings within 48 hours. You keep the report whether or not you hire us. Only the repair work that follows is quoted, and that quote is fixed before anything is touched.
Can you repair Stripe payments that charge but do not update the app?
Yes. We trace the complete payment lifecycle: checkout creation, payment intent, webhook signature, event delivery, idempotency, database write, reconciliation, and the state shown to the user.
Will I keep the code after the rescue?
Yes. You own the code, the repository, the infrastructure and every account it runs on. We document the paths we repaired and hand them over. There is no licence, no retainer you have to sign, and nothing stopping you taking it to another engineer tomorrow.
How quickly can you start if production is already broken?
Send the repo, production URL, error details, and access to logs. There is nothing to pay for the audit, so we start as soon as access is complete and deliver the written report within 48 hours.