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GuideMar 3, 2026·5 min read

Before You Ship: The Vibe Code Checklist

Your app works. The design is clean. The domain is pointed. Do these five things before you hit deploy.

You're ready to launch. The app works. The design is clean. The domain is pointed. Your finger is hovering over deploy.

Do these five things first.

1. Run a VibeCheck scan

Paste your code or connect your repo. Get a score. Read the issues. This takes less than a minute and is the single most useful thing you can do in the final hour before launch.

You're not looking for a perfect score. You're looking for surprises — things that would embarrass you if a user found them before you did.

2. Search your codebase for these strings

Open your editor and search for each of these:

  • TODO
  • console.log
  • password
  • secret
  • api_key
  • localhost
  • test@
  • example.com

These are the fingerprints of code that wasn't finished, code that was built for development, and credentials that shouldn't be in your codebase. Find them now, not in a bug report at 2am.

3. Check your environment variables

Open your .env.production or your Vercel/Railway environment settings. Verify every variable that needs to be there is there. Verify nothing sensitive is hardcoded in the code itself.

Check that your Stripe keys are live keys, not test keys. Check that your database URL points to production, not local. Check that your auth secret is set.

This is the check that saves you from launching a product that silently doesn't work because one variable is missing.

4. Test the unhappy paths

You've tested that things work. Now test that things fail gracefully.

  • What happens if someone enters an invalid email?
  • What happens if a payment fails?
  • What happens if your API is down?
  • What happens if someone tries to access a route they shouldn't?

AI-generated code handles happy paths beautifully. It handles failure states inconsistently. Find out now what yours does.

5. Read your Terms of Service

This sounds boring. It's not.

If you used VibeCheck or any automated tool to check your code, your Terms should say that your automated analysis is a tool, not a guarantee. That you're not liable for issues not caught. That users assume some risk.

If you wrote your Terms with an AI, there's a real chance they say something you didn't intend. Read them. Actually read them.

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The score you should ship at

There's no universal right answer, but here's our honest take:

Personal project: Ship at 60+. Learn as you go. Public SaaS (free): Ship at 70+. Users forgive early products. Paid SaaS: Don't ship below 80. People paying deserve better. Anything with sensitive data: 85+ minimum. Non-negotiable.

After you ship

Set a reminder to re-scan in 30 days. Code changes. New dependencies get added. Features get built on top of the foundation you just checked. The scan you ran today is a snapshot, not a permanent bill of health.

Ship with confidence. Check before you do.

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