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🛑 Before you spend a single dollar building your app — ask yourself these 5 questions.
I've seen too many founders rush into development with a great idea but no clear answer to "who is this actually for?"
The code is rarely the reason apps fail. It's almost always one of these:
1️⃣ Vague target user
2️⃣ Too many features in v1
3️⃣ No real validation (compliments ≠ customers)
4️⃣ No retention plan
5️⃣ Unclear code ownership
If you can answer all 5 confidently, you're in great shape to build.
If a couple stump you — that's normal, and it's exactly what a good first conversation is for.
Building or planning a mobile app? Drop a comment or DM me, happy to talk through it 👇
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Going with B
You're starting a new project today.
Which one are you choosing? 👀
🅰️ Claude Code
🅱️ Codex
What's the biggest advantage of your choice? 👇
69 voted
85%
12 voted
15%
81 votes
Closed
If you asked me this 2 months ago, I would've chosen Codex. But Claude is another level these days (specially because of the extended usage limit).
1: “Integrate RevenueCat for payments.”
And it’s done?
Without App Store / Play Store setup?
Without product configuration?
Without entitlement mapping?
Without receipt validation?
Do you think any AI agent just figures that out?
2: “Integrate Stripe so I can receive payments in my app.”
Cool.
But you missed something.
Webhook is not set.
And then what happens?
User cancels payment
system, never gets the event
paid features still active
Revenue leak. Silent.
3: “Add login system.”
without session invalidation?
without refresh token rotation?
without secure storage?
Stolen token = permanent access.
4: “Secure APIs”
without backend authorization?
without object-level checks?
So, any user can simply change an ID…
and sees another user’s data?
5: “System is stable.”
without retry limits?
without circuit breakers?
One failing API -> infinite retry loop -> self-inflicted outage.
6: “AI feature works.”
without token caps?
without prompt injection protection?
One input -> cost explosion -> unpredictable billing.
7: “Save user data.”
without backend confirmation?
UI shows success… but nothing saved.
refresh -> everything gone.
8: “File upload works.”
without file type validation?
without size limits?
Someone uploads a massive file…
and kills your storage or crashes processing.
9: “Database is optimized.”
without indexing?
without query batching?
one page load -> 100+ queries -> silent slowdown.
10: “Notifications are working.”
without event deduplication?
Same event fires twice -> user gets duplicate emails.
11: “Payments are safe.”
without idempotency keys?
user clicks twice -> gets charged twice.
12: “System is scalable.”
without stateless design?
One server -> one bottleneck -> everything breaks under load.
13: “Deploy is safe.”
without feature flags?
one push -> full production break -> no rollback path.
14: “Logs are available.”
without structured logging?
Debugging becomes guesswork in production.
15: “Everything is connected.”
without failure isolation?
One third-party API goes down → entire app breaks.
16: “Vibe coder says: test end-to-end.”
But he means:
login works -> ship it.
No real devices.
No cancellation flows.
No failure scenarios.
No edge cases.
…only 16 points, hundreds more to address as an engineer.
Lately, I audited a few vibe-coded SaaS projects.
And what shocked me wasn’t the bugs.
It was how confidently incomplete the systems were.
The clients genuinely thought the product was “production-ready.”
Until I started showing what happens outside the happy path.
That was the moment the room changed.
Because this wasn’t debugging anymore.
-This was an engineering reality showing up.
So instead of manually reviewing random files, I built something structured:
The 24_Phase_Agentic_Software_Due_Diligence_and_Audit_Framework.
Each acts like a different senior engineer.
Engineering optimizes for survival in real-world production.
This isn’t hacking.
This is engineering thinking at the system scale.
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