Turning a Buggy Prototype into a Production-Ready Web App
The Challenge
A food blogger used v0.dev to build a recipe sharing platform where home cooks could save and organize their recipes. The prototype looked good, but once he deployed it, users reported recipes disappearing, the site breaking on mobile devices, and authentication issues - people were getting logged out randomly and some saw other users' private recipes. He needed to fix these critical bugs before launching to his Instagram followers.
My Approach
I spent 2.5 weeks debugging and fixing the core issues:
Found that user authentication wasn't properly checking user IDs in database queries, causing recipe data to leak between users
Fixed all database queries to include proper user filtering using Prisma
Rewrote the auth logic using NextAuth.js to stop random logouts
Added input validation on forms (the AI-generated code had none)
Made the UI responsive for mobile using Tailwind CSS breakpoints
Added error handling so the app shows helpful messages instead of crashing
Fixed image uploads which were failing silently
Moved hardcoded API keys to environment variables
Added loading states throughout the app
Set up proper deployment on Vercel with environment configuration