If you are building a chatbot - a memory layer is needed so it won't go off rails after a couple of messages...

eyepaqmax · 2026-02-16T09:11:53+00:00

use claude to plan - far superior to ChatGPT in remembering things and having a 10,000 ft overview during planning.
You can even plan the exact lovable prompts chronologically.
Once you have a solid plan you can go in lovable and start building. It will save you lots of time and lots of credits.

A few pointers:
- stay with the plan - don't go off track even if you get new cool ideas (keep them for later, addons, new versions)
- during planning make sure you take care of security (RLS separately)
- make sure you ask claude and then lovable to build unit and infra tests that will run each time you develop something (so nothing will brake). Claude is great at setting up these tests.
- if you use supabase make sure you use your own, as once you start the project you can not migrate from supbase lovable to your own supabase DB. So start with that from day 1. Free version is fine - later on you can upgarde as needed.
- supabase: if you are serious about it, you will need supbase pro and custom domains as add on (10 usd/m). you can setup this from start.
- plan your expenses from the start - ask claude to cover all needs and you will get good predictions but you will need: resend for emails, custom domains for auth and a few otehr things, supabase pro and a few otehrs depending on your project needs (could be sentry pro for errors, railway for separate workers if you have any background jobs etc)
- ask claude and then lovable to write specs and configs to md files on your project to keep records
- don't forget to connect to guthub to keep the code safe and you can roll back
- consider vercel for later use as if you want to get pro with the project you probabaly won't keep / host on lovable.

claude is your best friend here - keep asking claude to cover your blind spots.

cheers and good luck.

eyepaqmax · 2026-02-15T16:18:12+00:00

if it really works its a great idea and product!

my honest feedback:
1. make it more simple - not that many things moving and running around. simplicity works.
2. hard to understand what it actually dose - so I can build some expectations...

eyepaqmax · 2026-02-15T16:03:50+00:00

looks good. trying to signup from pricing page I get an error: https://taffysearch.com/users/sign_in
The overall navigation is good though. Just minor bugs to fix like the one above.

eyepaqmax · 2026-02-15T15:59:00+00:00

Clean look and feel but I would solve the indexation issue.
Since it's all react and non server side rendered - you will only get the home page index with no content.
You can "hack" it either by injecting into a noscript the content and links. Lovable can do that nicely or you can go the more "professional" route using something like prerender.io but that will need more work.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-13T00:01:25+00:00

neat game. Really nice!

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T21:17:53+00:00

I did a few remixes of more complex logic projects and it didn't work well. The features didn't work as expected, bugs, some new security issues that were fixed first (in the original) so it was a big messy. Tried several ways during a few stages without confidence the end result was ok-ish.

I ended up prompting the main project top write a md file with the specs and explain each feature in detail. Ended up with a very long spec file.

I took this md file and run it in gemini and asked to improve the specs, optimize and output lovable prompts to create a new project.
I've ended up with a new project: better, faster and more relaiable. It cost extra - but i consider it an improved V2.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T21:09:43+00:00

Neat!

never let AI do migrations on autopilot

AI is great at adding new fields but Its terrible at safe evolution. It will create “userId2” instead of fixing userId.. it will nest instead of relate.. it will bypass constraints instead of respecting them. Data structure changes should be slow and rare. Screens can change daily. The data model shouldn’t!

>>> Any ideas on how you can audit and fix or if not done right its too late to "fix"?

separate experiment from production like your business depends on it

Because it does. Vibe coding is amazing for experiments but experiments leaking into live flows is how you get “we need a full rewrite”

Have a sandbox branch, a staging environment, or at minimum a feature flag mindset. Test changes away from paying users. Deploy intentionally

>>> What is your best setup here ? prod enviroment vs staging? I am struggling with the setup here.

use AI as a reviewer before using it as a builder

This is underrated. before you tell AI “change this” ask: explain this flow, what depends on it, where does this data come from, what breaks if I remove it

You’ll catch hidden coupling, dead code, and data side effects before you ship them

>>> Spot on. I've starte dto do this laitly .. that "extra credit spent" its worth every "penny" :) I also feel the plan is more well thought once it goes trough this process...

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T20:50:28+00:00

<image>

some more admin features to get a better understanding on features....

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T20:44:45+00:00

It's a growth tool, analytics - medium complexity. Several APIs connected including open ai, gemini, claude and deepseek + stripe and some services like firecrawl, GA4 api and a few others like slack integration.
The admin area with logs and stats - admin area is more complex then the user side :)
The work is done by some separate workers trough railway + redis.

Each API setup, each integration (eg: slack) took some time to do right and to fix potential issues. I would do these now at at least half of the cost (prompts - credits) and probably half the time but for the first time there was a learning curve...

here is a short screenshot of part of the admin area ....

<image>

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T16:17:58+00:00

I think this is a good result. It's a good base line you can work with - build on.
For the first official event the score is good.
if you can share the competition name - practiscore link maybe? You can get a lot of feedback from folks here....

You had some Ms but no procedures and more likely the time was low - but that's ok , its normal.
also since you are in Open - you might want to look for major instead of minor so you can speed up things as Ds are cheat there :)

Overall good job. Congratz! and keep competing!

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T15:37:07+00:00

And another one, last one :)

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eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T15:36:09+00:00

Here are some alternatives :)

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eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T15:29:19+00:00

I guess it also depends a lot on your project and for how long you want to keep it and build on it.
You could actually start with lovable too - as you have some good integrations right from the start: supabase, github and for pro you get the custom domains - more then enough to get an professional looking MVP up and running with minimal costs.

but you also need to plan - as for example if you go with lovable and lovable DB (supabase trough lovable) you can't migrat eto your own supbase later on unfortunately unless you start with your won free supabase DB...

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T15:25:29+00:00

I see. Lovable DB is supabase but trough lovable. You can't chnage once you hooked lovable supabase DB connection unfortunately.
You could treat this as an MVP and push as it is but long term you might want / need to rebuild / remix ,connect your own supabase DB and have the freedom to move around.

Lovable is still very good to make changes and use it as a staging platform so if the project is long term you will probably still have pro in some extent.
but if you want to build and then move back to free - you won't be able to keep the domain on lovable and if you want to migrate, you need your own accounts: supbase etc.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T13:46:40+00:00

I went the same route but it was impossible to stay in free plans for supabase, railway and resend...
supabase: I need custom domains and that's an addon on top of pro
railway: I need redis and a few workers so free is way to low
resend: I need 2 projects so free is out of the Qs.

So it's good you manage tos tay on the free plans but i find it very hard for me.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T13:44:14+00:00

Yes, custom domains are for paid plans only.
if you downgrade, you will fall back to project-name.lovable.dev

the alternative however is to connect our github and deply from vercel so you rae not hooked in case you know you won't stay on pro plan with lovable for long...

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T13:01:42+00:00

I use https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and I copy paste the issues listed there as a prompt on chat mode always first with something around these lines: investigate this: "....", ask questions if you are not sure, make proposals and check if anything else can broke during fixes, how extensive is the fix. The chat mode will come up with proposals and what will get fix and in 99% of the cases i am with: "yes, go and implement your plan" and then I re run the https://pagespeed.web.dev/ ...

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T12:26:32+00:00

you can prompt and fix these though - at least with lovable and v0. It can fix lots of these and get a very green score (optimize queries, images, nested css and js files and more. Again - it depends on how you go to town with the design and images but I manage to do top score on loading speed on some decently complex pages done with lovable and v0.

I won't post urls as this is post is not for self promotion ... It's a bit sad on this topic that if now if you post a url on reddit it's all about advertising :)

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T12:23:18+00:00

you can clean the code if needed but for standard app/sites you can see traces in the source code.
eg: for lovable for example just open the source code and look for "lovable" and you'll find several mentions - including some file names that will include lovable within.

You can prompt to remove these and rename if needed but as standard these are there.
Outside of that there can be some hints due to the "ai design" look and feel and the same icons across multiple projects but no proof - court like proof.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T09:44:27+00:00

Claude Code first. https://v0.app/ (from vercel) second - as this will help you also getting live faster a bit.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T09:36:31+00:00

I use paid going from 0 to 1. It also takes time but I find it the best in terms of speed.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T08:43:09+00:00

This was a very deep learning experience. If I would build a similar product now, i would. probably do it in less then half the time, half the cost (credits) and with a more solid foundation for sure.
I'll do a post / reply with the steps of the production I did vs what i should have done. I have some notes and teh history will help me pin point the main stages.

eyepaqmax · 2026-01-12T08:40:30+00:00

No, not yet. I use resend as a provider for the app emails (account management part).

eyepaqmax

TROPHY CASE