This is the normal outcome, not a failure
AI builders are genuinely good at getting you to a working app. That part is real.
What they don't do is the eighteen months afterwards. Nobody is watching for the API that changed, the certificate that expired, or the store policy that got updated. The tool built it and moved on, and so did you.
A team who shipped five production apps this way wrote that maintenance turned into a daily reality: email systems breaking, OAuth connections failing, databases going down. Their conclusion was that someone has to act as a full-time reliability engineer.
That's the part nobody mentions in the demo.
What usually goes wrong
Integrations change underneath you. Stripe updates an API version, Google changes an auth flow, and the code the AI wrote six months ago no longer matches. Payments or logins fail silently.
The database wasn't built to grow. It worked at 50 users. At 5,000 it's slow, or duplicating records, or timing out.
Store requirements move. Apple and Google change what they require every year. Your build gets rejected, then eventually the listing goes.
Keys and certificates expire. They do it quietly, on their own schedule.
Security was never really reviewed. Publicly readable database rules and exposed API keys are common in AI-generated apps, because nothing prompts you to check.
You can't change it any more. The prompt that would fix one thing breaks two others, and the code is beyond what you can read.
Why asking the AI to fix it usually makes it worse
The tool that wrote the code doesn't know what your app is currently doing in production. It can't see your live database, your error logs, or what your actual users are hitting.
So it guesses, rewrites something that was working, and you end up with two problems instead of one. That's the point most people arrive here.
What to do right now if it's live and broken
- Stop prompting. Every attempt makes the fix harder to find.
- Write down exactly what changed and when. Even "it stopped last Tuesday" narrows it enormously.
- Check you own your accounts. The app store listing, the database, the domain, the payment account. Make sure they're in your name and you can get in.
- Get someone to look before you rebuild. Most of these are a few hours of work, not a fresh start.
What I do
I take over AI-built and no-code apps and keep them running.
First move on anything urgent is a fallback, so the business keeps working while the real problem gets fixed. On a booking or marketplace app, every hour down is money.
Then the actual fix. Then a plan so the same thing doesn't happen again next quarter.
180+ products delivered for clients in the US, UK and Australia. I've handled lost access, data loss, payment integrations failing, and app store removals.
Start with a free review
Send me what you have. I'll come back in writing with:
- How your app was actually built and what it depends on
- What's broken now
- What's fragile and likely to break next
- Whether it's worth fixing or worth rebuilding
- What either one costs
Free, no obligation. If the honest answer is you don't need me, I'll say so.
Keeping it running afterwards
Once it's stable, the App Protection Plan covers emergencies from £490/year. App goes down, payments fail, store pulls your listing: covered, no emergency invoice.
Questions
Which AI builders do you work with?
Lovable, Bolt, Replit, v0, Adalo's Ada, and the no-code platforms: Bubble, Glide, Softr, FlutterFlow.
I don't understand the code at all. Is that a problem?
No. Most people in this position don't. You don't need to.
Will you tell me to rebuild it?
Only if it's true. Most AI-built apps are fixable. Rebuilding is usually a developer's preference, not your requirement.
How fast can you look?
The free review usually comes back within a couple of days. If your app is down right now, say so and I'll prioritise it.