For founders and small SaaS and AI teams without a senior engineer
Take your Lovable or Cursor prototype to production without starting over.
You built something people want, fast. Now real users are signing up, the AI keeps fixing one bug and causing two, and you are not sure who can read your Supabase tables. We review what you have, keep what works, and add the access rules, tests and deploys a paying customer expects.
Example workflow · Sheet SA-01
Sound familiar?
When the prototype starts pushing back.
None of this means the builder was the wrong choice. It means the app has users now, and the next stage needs different habits.
- The AI patches one error, breaks two more, and your credits are gone by lunch.
- You are not sure whether the public key can read or delete other users’ rows.
- Deploys go out by hand from one laptop, with no staging and no rollback.
- A first enterprise customer sent a security questionnaire you cannot answer honestly yet.
What we build
What changes between demo and production.
Each row is a fix we make often. The review tells you which ones your app needs and in what order.
| Job | Today | After |
|---|---|---|
| Database access | Supabase tables readable with the anon key and no row level security | RLS policies on every table, service keys kept server-side, and tests that prove it |
| Deploys | Pushed from one machine, straight to production | GitHub Actions builds each pull request to staging, with a one-step promote and rollback |
| Errors | Users email screenshots when something breaks | Sentry alerts a named person with the stack trace before the user writes in |
| Secrets | API keys in the repo history or the frontend bundle | Keys in the host’s secret store, rotated, with the leaked ones revoked |
| Security questionnaire | The founder guesses at answers about backups and access | Answers backed by controls that exist: auth, backups, access reviews, logging |
| Prototype to platform | A single-page demo stitched together one prompt at a time | A planned rebuild of the weak parts into a maintainable app, delivered in gated milestones |
Typical prices for founders and small teams
Know the number before we start.
These are our published ranges. The audit fee is credited toward the project.
Security and architecture review with a written keep, fix or rebuild answer.
One fix, such as error tracking, a CI pipeline on one repo, or a secrets cleanup.
The staged build that takes the app from demo to something you can sell.
20 hours a month of a senior engineer who writes and reviews code.
SaaS & startups FAQ
Founders usually ask these first.
Do we have to rebuild our Lovable, Bolt or Replit app?
Usually not. Most AI-built prototypes have a sound product with a few weak spots: data access rules, secrets, deploys and error handling. The audit tells you in writing what to keep, what to fix and what to rebuild, with a price for each, and you decide.
When a larger rebuild does make sense, we deliver it in stages, each with its own written price and sign-off.
How much does a fractional senior engineer cost?
Our Fractional Engineer plan is $4,000/month for 20 hours of hands-on senior engineering, published on our pricing page. That covers code review, architecture decisions, CI/CD, roadmaps and delivery oversight.
It is engineering time from a degreed software engineer, not an executive title. We don't sit on your board; we write and review the code and help you make the calls.
Can you make us SOC 2 compliant?
No. Only an independent audit firm can issue a SOC 2 report. What we can do is a security review, then set up the engineering controls auditors ask about, like access control, CI/CD, logging and backups, and help you answer security questionnaires truthfully. We don't run penetration tests or promise an app is fully secure.
If your product handles health, student or EU personal data, we build to the controls your counsel specifies. Anything with patient information starts with a signed BAA and your compliance lead's sign-off.
Who owns the code and the accounts?
You do. We usually work in your own GitHub organization and your own hosting accounts, so nothing lives in ours. When the project ends we turn off our access. If we stay on for ongoing work, credentials live in a business password manager such as 1Password, not in anyone’s notes.
A note from Dean
I've been shipping production software since 2020, from a TypeScript PWA that replaced a legacy Java app to an organization-wide platform for thousands of users, built in Go, Spring Boot and React. The prototype is how you learned people want this, so I won't lecture you for building it with AI. I'll read your code and tell you plainly what to keep.
Dean Whitten
Start here
Send us the repo you are nervous about.
You'll hear back within two business days with a useful next step, even if that step is a setting you haven't turned on yet. Rather call or text? (478) 954-7760