Hardened an AI-generated prototype into secure, scalable production software — in time for the investor demo.
4 weeks
To production
0
Critical bugs at launch
$1.2M
Seed raised after demo
The problem
A founder had a genuinely impressive prototype built in an AI coding tool — the UI worked and users loved it — but under the hood there was no real authentication, no database migrations, no tests, and a data model that wouldn't survive real usage. Investors expected a live demo in a month, and shipping it as-is would have leaked data on day one.
Our solution
We kept the UI the founder loved and rebuilt everything risky underneath it: real auth, a sound data model, typed APIs, tests, payments and monitoring — so the product could actually take real users and real money without falling over.
What we did
- Ran a security and architecture audit to map exactly what was unsafe or unscalable.
- Replaced mocked auth with real authentication, sessions and role-based access control.
- Redesigned the data model and introduced versioned database migrations with Drizzle.
- Wrapped the backend in typed tRPC APIs, added a test suite, and integrated Stripe for live billing.
- Set up CI/CD, error monitoring and observability so issues surface before users hit them.
The outcome
The founder walked into the raise with a product that actually held up under scrutiny — same UI investors had seen, now on foundations that could scale — and closed the round.
“They kept the app we loved and rebuilt everything dangerous underneath it. We demoed on real infrastructure and closed the round a month later.”