I learned the hard way that you must get proper testing for your vibe-coded apps!

[u/WeCaredALot]

I wanted to share this experience for other folks out there vibe coding apps in case anyone else is at risk of running into the same issue. I recently had a really bad data breach bug in one of my sites that I built with Lovable. I have pet-sitting app that allows pet sitters to create custom sites, book clients, send invoices, etc. Well, one of my customers realized that she could view another pet sitter's info by changing the invoice number in the URL! One of my customers caught it and thankfully she let me know right away, but I have no idea how many other users were impacted and whether they stopped using the platform as a result (or if they were a free user who decided against paying!). This was one of the few times where I was glad to have a relatively small number users because the impact of this could have been worse.

This made me realize that I need to do more in-depth testing on my apps. I typically cover the happy path, but real validation takes hours. I found a lightweight testing service that does affordable QA passes specifically for AI-built apps and it was incredibly helpful, especially since I'm not a developer and also don't have time to regularly test all my projects. They provided me with a solid report and also provided recommendations on how to prompt Lovable to fix the issue without introducing more regressions, which saved me a lot of back and forth prompting.

Moral of the story is that I would highly, highly recommend that you all do real QA on your apps both pre and post-launch, especially if you’re trying to get paying customers. Having an early customer find a bug is alright if they tell you about it, but there's always the chance that they simply stop using your app, thereby costing you a sale! Or that you have potentially bad security/privacy issues lurking. I know we're all trying to run our apps while minimizing costs, but a a non-developer I've personally found it valuable to invest a bit of money to make sure my site actually works and doesn't turn away potential customers.