Shared intent · Harden or rewrite
Teams often ask whether a vibe-coded MVP should be hardened or thrown away. The honest answer lives in the risk profile, not the origin story. This page is the test: keep what you can own, rewrite what you cannot prove.
30 min · senior team · leave with a clear next step
Company-level evidence
Review methodologyCitation-ready answer
MVP hardening is the evidence-led decision to keep a vibe-coded codebase and make its highest-risk flows ownable — access, recovery, delivery — instead of discarding the prototype on principle. Harden when the domain is understandable and tests can wrap it. Rewrite a slice when trust boundaries cannot be proven. Pride about origin is not a risk register.
The decision
A rewrite is not automatically safer. It can discard hard-won domain knowledge and introduce fresh defects. Use evidence.
Data ownership is recoverable, tests can wrap important behavior, dependencies are supportable, and deployment can be made reproducible.
You cannot establish who can access data, secrets are irretrievably mixed, or there is no test seam that can prove the path safe.
If proving safety requires unsafe destructive changes, the cost of a bounded rebuild is often the cheaper proof.
A strangler path puts a stable interface around a risky subsystem, migrates one capability, and measures the result.
How we run it
The goal is not to erase that a model helped write the first version. The goal is a codebase and operating model a team can own.
01
List the journeys that take money, personal data, or admin power. Those slices go first. Cosmetic debt waits.
02
Authorization failures, integrity, migrations, and the primary integration. A large test count is not a substitute for the right boundary.
03
A versioned artifact, a staging environment, and a restore rehearsal. Hardening that cannot ship or recover is theater.
04
If the honest next step is a bounded rewrite, we say so before a retainer starts. If it is keep-and-wrap, we say that too.
How to
Use the risk profile, not the origin story. Preserve user-visible behavior while you replace uncertainty.
Step 01
List journeys that move money, personal data, invitations, or admin actions. Mark what you cannot currently explain.
Step 02
If you cannot say who can read or write a given record — including by guessing an ID — treat that slice as rewrite-or-wrap, not polish.
Step 03
If important behavior cannot be wrapped with checks, proving safety may cost more than rebuilding the bounded surface.
Step 04
Put a stable interface around the risky subsystem, migrate one capability, measure, and preserve data deliberately.
Step 05
Every unexplained control gets a name and a date. A generic hardening score with no owners is not a decision.
Read next
These pages are already on the site. Use them to pressure-test the bet before a call.
Production-ready checklist
The ship gate this hardening work is aiming at.
Production-ready after vibe coding (2026)
The essay that spells the operating contract in full.
Lovable MVP hardening
The same decision, scoped to a Lovable-generated app.
Book a discovery call
Thirty minutes with a senior teammate. Honest next steps.
Internals
Stay inside the vibe-coding cluster, or open booking and the Austin money page.
Continue
Shared intents and the Lovable, Rork, and Bolt packs.
Continue
Definition and week-one questions.
Continue
Bring the risk register. We will say keep, wrap, or rewrite.
Continue
Studio scoring if you are shortlisting Austin partners.
Before you book
Prefer writing? Send project details and we reply within one business day.
From evidence. Harden when the domain is understandable, data ownership is recoverable, and tests can wrap the important paths. Rewrite a component when access cannot be established, secrets are entangled, or proving safety costs more than a bounded rebuild.
Keep the product available. Put a stable interface around one risky capability — billing, invites, file access — migrate that capability, and measure. Do not pause the business for a pride rewrite of screens that already work.
When there is no reliable test seam, when trust boundaries cannot be mapped, or when the data model would require unsafe destructive changes. Even then, rewrite the smallest surface that removes the risk.
It freezes unreviewed expansion on the risky paths until owners and controls exist. Features that do not touch money, identity, or tenant data can often continue. The freeze is a boundary, not a personality.
Bring the journeys that take money or personal data. In thirty minutes we will name the first slice — harden, wrap, or rebuild.
Prefer writing? Send project details on the contact page.
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