Establish operational truth
Trace the product from code and configuration through runtime behavior, data, and release operations.
AI Product Recovery
The prototype works. Now it has to survive production.
A founder-led recovery engagement for AI-built or rapidly assembled products that have outgrown prototype-driven development.
Discuss product recovery01 / SIGNALS
Signals that the prototype needs recovery
- 01
The happy path works, but authentication, payments, synchronization, permissions, or failure recovery remain unpredictable.
- 02
Routine changes break unrelated behavior because system boundaries and data ownership are unclear.
- 03
The team can demonstrate features but cannot produce production evidence for security, reliability, performance, or rollback.
- 04
Generated code, dependencies, and infrastructure have accumulated faster than anyone can safely review or own them.
- 05
A launch, customer commitment, due-diligence review, or funding milestone now depends on engineering confidence the prototype cannot provide.
02 / RECOVERY SCOPE
Recovery scope
Recovery begins with a paid assessment. Implementation is scoped only after the critical paths, evidence, and ownership gaps are understood.
- 01
Code, configuration, infrastructure, data flows, dependencies, and critical user journeys across frontend, mobile, backend, and third-party services.
- 02
Immediate containment of material security, privacy, data-integrity, availability, and release risks.
- 03
Evidence-based decisions on what to preserve, refactor, isolate, replace, or deliberately defer.
- 04
Production controls: tests, observability, deployment gates, rollback, incident diagnostics, and operational ownership.
- 05
A delivery sequence that protects current users and business commitments while the system is recovered.
03 / OUTPUT
What the engagement produces
- 01
An evidence-linked risk register prioritized by business impact, urgency, confidence, and containment status.
- 02
A keep, repair, isolate, or replace decision map for the current system.
- 03
Production-readiness gates covering critical journeys, data, security, reliability, deployment, and rollback.
- 04
A sequenced recovery plan with dependencies, accountable owners, verification criteria, and investment boundaries.
- 05
When implementation continues with DSL, working recovery increments, documentation, and a practical engineering handover.
04 / METHOD
Recovery method
Contain critical risk
Protect users, data, access, and delivery before expanding scope or adding more generated code.
Recover the product
Stabilize or selectively rebuild the highest-value paths in verifiable production-ready increments.
Return control
Leave explicit ownership, observable operations, release evidence, documentation, and a maintainable path forward.
05 / COMMERCIAL BOUNDARY
What this engagement is not
It is not cosmetic cleanup, an indiscriminate rewrite, or an hourly promise to make every generated line elegant. The paid assessment establishes what is safe to keep and what the business must fund to operate the product responsibly.
NEXT DECISION
When vibe coding ends, engineering begins.
Share what is already working, what must reach production, and which commitment is now at risk. We will define the recovery assessment and the decision it must support.
Discuss product recovery