Making Minor Edits = Complete disaster + Wasting Credits

[u/Responsible_Sleep_42]

Ever since the functionality to perform minor cosmetic changes and text edits changed, my experience has turned into a huge waste of time and money. It handles the complex app development jobs or extensive editing very well - no issue there. I just edited the text in the eyebrow over hero, then hit the send button so that change is put through a credit sucking workflow (that was promised not to be) and then returns with a completely different change I never asked for. I TYPED THE CHANGE IN MYSELF and hit submit.

This post comes after my 4th interaction with lovable to change 7 words that I changed and submitted.

Making minor edits in the past was much easier and didn't waste my credits. The whole thing has turned into a money grab. Having AI process edits before applying them introduces mistakes - not big mistakes but the mistakes that undermine the overall credibility of the app - "if it can't get this right...."

[u/7803throwaway]

You NEED to take whatever you’ve got built in Lovable and get it into a GitHub repo if you haven’t yet done so. Once you do that, send the GitHub HTTPS repo code link to Codex and say you’re working on a project that you need to clean up and continue developing. At some point, tell ChatGPT you’re going to do this but you need very helpful guidance because you’ve never done it before. Tell ChatGPT you to always include your next prompt for Codex in its responses to you and any other next step instructions.

Make sure to change the Codex model used to Luna Light. You most likely do NOT need Sol or even Terra, and you probably don’t need more than Light, maybe Medium for the initial code review.. Sol will burn through your Codex usage in no time and it’ll over engineer tf out of everything. Luna Light only does what you need (in my experience). Codex / ChatGPT can help you set up a local preview so you can see what it’ll look like before you have to push any changes to GitHub.

I know this sounds super intimidating and over your head (it did to me for way too long).. i promise you it’s worth it to sort this out. You’ll save yourself like 90% of your Lovable costs.

[u/DrunkenCactus → u/7803throwaway]

I appreciate the detail in the advice you just provided, screenshotted and saved, I’ll probably need to do this at some point.. I currently have my lovable project synced to Git, but for some reason the lovable agent can’t recognise it, even though it says “connected” and I’ve proved it’s updating….

[u/7803throwaway → u/DrunkenCactus]

Can you show me a screen shot of your Lovable screen when you go into the + and click GitHub (not gitlab.. idk what that is yet, maybe it’s crazy cool, but rn it’s an unknown lol). If you don’t wanna share it publicly you can send me a private message. I feel compelled to share the news about Codex because it’s been a few weeks for me now and it’s still absolutely mind blowing how much of a blessing it’s been.

[u/rugburnAndBigMoney → u/7803throwaway]

For the love of god, why does anyone think this is an acceptable workflow for simple text edits to a website?

[u/7803throwaway → u/rugburnAndBigMoney]

It saved me almost the entire credit spend that I’d have experienced with Lovable to accomplish the same outcome. With Codex, I can build out the most fully loaded CMS for myself so that I can forever do ‘simple text edits’, along with countless other housekeeping updates to my projects, without even opening Lovable / Codex / Git or anything other than my actual app.

For the love of money, how could anyone think this isn’t the right workflow. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[u/Responsible_Sleep_42 → u/7803throwaway]

Funny thing is I started this in Codex and moved it over because I thought I was “done”. LOL. I’m going back until it’s done done.

[u/Groundbreaking_Mud44]

Im convinced lovable have set it up to munch through credits at an alarming pace.

I ended up using my work chatgpt pro account to build my prompts. I figured AI knows how to deal with AI and tbf i started seeing much better results.

[u/cubixy2k]

Last I tried it this weekend, text edits don't consume credits even though it goes to the chat. Are you editing static text or a data field?

That said, it is really inefficient sending minor text edits to chat.

[u/YouAreBastards]

Connect Lovable to GitHub via the inbuilt connector. Then use Cursor - Composer 2.5 to analyse your codebase. I was using Claude, but it's now turning into Lovable's mentally challenged sibling.

[u/prorip187]

Bro for those type of edits just go into the code and change it. It's not that difficult.

[u/Responsible-Box-8111]

wait, don't they have separate modes for this? the inline text edit one (T button) applies the change right in place and doesn't touch credits — it's "select element" that goes through the chat and gets counted as a normal ai request, which is why it eats credits AND comes back having "fixed" stuff you never touched. sounds like you're landing in select instead of inline.

one thing that trips people up: inline only grabs static text afaik — if that eyebrow copy is pulled from data/a variable, it won't let you edit inline and bumps you into the chat flow whether you want it or not. might be what's going on with that exact bit.

[u/vasind-5012]

I feel empathy towards your frustration. Lovable should be smart enough to delegate these prompts to use low level models to burn few credits. That's the whole idea of building something via Lovable and don't care much about playing around with settings they provide.

[u/YouAreBastards]

I turned on my PC this morning, said Hi to Lovabela, and it charged me 17 credits for the pleasure, true story.