Renovating a vibe-coded app: readable code, no reasoning behind it
A client had been building an education platform in Lovable for months. Too many issues piled up, so they brought in devs. I got assigned to it. The job was to turn a vibecoded app into something production ready. First time I'd worked on a fully vibecoded app. First thing I did after getting access and exporting the code was try to run it locally. React/Vite frontend, Supabase backend. Quick…
A client requested a local education platform to be renovated from a vibecoded app into a production-ready application. The task required the reporter to turn the existing code into a functional and secure platform. Upon receiving access to the code, the reporter attempted to run the application locally, discovering 132 migration files.
After a quick audit, the reporter set up a fresh Supabase project and ran the code, encountering 319 issues in total, 29 of which were critical. The reporter identified security concerns, such as the possibility of a student becoming an administrator. A more significant issue arose when the reporter discovered four separate engines responsible for calculating a student's daily score, which was the product's primary feature.
Two of these engines applied different weights to sub-scores, resulting in varying grades for the same student depending on which engine ran last. All four engines wrote to the same field, causing inconsistencies. The reporter conveyed the issue to the client as a product question, emphasizing that no clear indication was provided in the code or communication about which engine should be considered the definitive one.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
