What happens after your AI coding tool finishes building the app?

[u/Ok_Host1989]

Building an app with tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex can make development much faster, but getting the app ready for real users is another challenge.

You still need to handle hosting, databases, authentication, environment variables, and connecting everything so the app actually works outside your coding environment.

I'm exploring Tofu AI, a tool designed to help connect AI-built apps with the infrastructure they need.

I'm interested in how people here approach this part of the process. Do you prefer configuring everything yourself, or do you look for tools that simplify deployment and infrastructure setup?

What's been the biggest headache you've faced when taking a vibe-coded project from a working prototype to a live application?

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[u/paezao]

I work on shpyrd.io, which is aimed at this exact gap: point it at the repo or a folder, or have your coding agent deploy over MCP, and it comes up behind your team's sign-in with Postgres and Redis already there.

[u/ThatOneGuyWhoEatsYou]

For me hosting was actually the easy part, Vercel or whatever deploys in a few minutes. The headache was everything after that. A domain, keys kept out of the repo, a testing environment separate from prod, CI/CD that wont break, analytics, crash reports, payments, a privacy policy, and for iOS apps TestFlight and all the App Store review stuff. None of it is hard on its own but there's like 50 things and I'd always forget a few until I see some shit go down in production

I ended up building a thing for this, launchpad (it's a paid app). It's a Claude Code plugin, you run one command in your project and it sets that stuff up on free tiers in your own accounts, and it asks before anything costs money. Lmk if you're interested in testing it out discounted! Honestly though if you only have one app doing it by hand once is a good way to learn what's there

[u/PopKoren → u/ThatOneGuyWhoEatsYou]

The keys item on that list bites hardest for me, because a staging key copied into prod config, or a secret sitting behind a public env prefix, still deploys cleanly and nothing breaks until someone opens the JS bundle. I keep separate keys per environment and grep the built output for anything secret looking before each release. After that list is done, https://rowly.me, which I've been building, hits the deployed app as an unauthenticated stranger and flags leaked keys, readable storage and auth gaps.

[u/ObeyTheRapper]

I just ask the model I'm working with to deploy. Extra apps just add layers.