Symptom

A 500 in production, from code that has never failed for you.

A server error that appears only once the app is deployed is seldom a fault in your logic. It is your own computer quietly providing something the project never wrote down, and the whole job is working out which of four or five things that is.

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It works locally and 500s live

What it looks like

The app starts, builds and behaves on your own machine. Deployed, some or all of the routes answer with a server error page carrying no detail, because production is configured to reveal none. The explanation exists in the host's log rather than in the browser, so the failure arrives as a blank wall.

Why it actually happens

A development machine accumulates state nobody records: values exported months ago in a shell profile, services already running and reachable, software installed once and globally, directories that exist because somebody made them. Deployment is a clean room. Anything the project needed and never declared is absent there, and the code that assumed it throws on the first request that reaches it.

How we find out which one it is

We begin at the host's runtime log for the exact request that failed, because that trace names the absent thing and ends the guessing in a single step. Then we check the project out into an empty environment and run it with nothing of yours available. Whatever breaks there is what breaks on your domain, and the two lists nearly always agree.

What the fix touches

Configuration far more often than source: the values the code reads re-entered where the deployed process can see them, a runtime version pinned rather than inherited, and the build's own settings made to agree about what it produces and where that goes. Where code does have to change, it is the short list of places that named something specific to one machine and now has to ask the environment what it has been given instead.

Where we see this most

Does this mean my code is wrong?

Seldom. In most of these the same commit that fails on your domain runs correctly from a clean checkout once the configuration is right, and separating those two cases is the first thing the audit does, before any price is attached.

Why is the error page empty?

Frameworks hide traces from visitors deliberately, because a trace tells a stranger about your file layout and your libraries. The detail is still being produced; it goes to the host's log, where only you and whoever you invite can read it.

Can you find it without access to my host?

We can narrow it a long way from the repository alone, but the runtime log is usually where the answer is sitting. Read access to the deployment's logs turns a shortlist into one cause, and most platforms let you share that without giving up the account.

How long does this take?

It is the quickest category of work we take on, because the evidence is written down rather than remembered. Most are identified the day they arrive and repaired within a few hours of you approving the price.

How it works

Audit

$199~~$349~~promo

You send a link, a repo, or both. We reproduce the problem, read the code, and record a short walkthrough: what's broken, why it broke, and what it takes to fix. You get written findings and a fixed quote.

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Full Fix

Priced after the audit

Scoped from the audit and agreed before anything starts. We fix the cause rather than the symptom, and hand back something maintainable, with a written note on what changed and why.

Nobody can price this honestly before seeing the code. The audit is what makes a firm number possible.

The audit is a fixed price and you know it before you pay. Everything after it is quoted from what the audit actually found, and you approve the number before any work starts.

Why trust us with it

What we can show you is who does the work, what it costs, and how well we already know the failure you are staring at.

A desk at night, the walkthrough being recorded

A small agency, not a marketplace

This is run by a small web agency. The person who records your audit is the person who does the fix, so you're not being routed to an anonymous bidder.

$199~~$349~~promo

The audit stands on its own

Plenty of people take the findings and do the work themselves, or hand them to their own developer. That is a fine outcome and nothing is bundled to stop it.

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Fixed price, agreed up front

You approve a number before work starts. If the job turns out harder than we estimated, that's ours to absorb, not a change order.

Built with one of these? You're in the right place.

Lovable: Lovable projects usually break at the Supabase edge: environment variables that never reached production, or row-level security left open on a table that holds real customer data.
Bolt: Bolt ships fast and leaves the build config behind. The deploy fails on a missing package, a Node version, or an API key that only ever existed in the preview.
Replit: Replit apps run fine in the workspace and 500 on a real domain: ports, file paths and secrets that were never wired up for the deployed process.
Cursor: Cursor edits confidently across files it has not read. Two features end up disagreeing about the same state, and the bug moves every time you fix it.
v0: v0 gives you the interface, not the wiring. Forms post to nothing, server actions are still stubs, and auth is a component rather than a session.
Windsurf: Windsurf refactors reach further than intended. Imports, types and routes drift apart until the build stops on something unrelated to what you changed.
Base44: Base44 apps hit their ceiling at data and roles: the model that fit the demo cannot carry a second kind of user without redoing what sits underneath it.
Claude Code: Claude Code writes real code, which means real dependencies, migrations and tests. When it breaks, it breaks somewhere prompting cannot reach.

What it usually turns out to be

It works locally, then 500s once deployed: Nearly always an environment variable, a build step or a file path that only exists on your machine. The code is usually fine.
The AI keeps fixing the same bug: Each pass patches the symptom because the cause sits a layer down, in the data model or in how state is shared. Prompting harder does not reach it.
Forms submit but nothing arrives: The browser gets a success back while the server quietly fails. Without error handling and logs nobody finds out until a customer complains.
Logins drop or leak between users: Session and auth code copied from an example built for a different rendering model. It looks right in testing and breaks under real traffic.

And what nobody notices until later

Security is the part an AI builder is quietest about. None of these stop the app working, which is exactly why they ship.

The database is open to anyone with the URL: Supabase and Firebase hand the browser a key on purpose — the row policies are what actually guard the data. Generated projects routinely ship with those policies off, which turns a public key into a key to everything.
Secrets that shipped to the browser: A service key pasted into a component, or one prefixed NEXT_PUBLIC_ so the build would stop complaining. It is in the page source, readable in devtools, and the bill for it is yours.
Any logged-in user can read every other user's data: The endpoint takes an id and returns that record without ever asking whose it is. Nothing looks wrong while you are the only account; change the number in the URL and you are in someone else's.
Nothing stops the same request a thousand times over: No rate limit and no real validation on the public routes, so login, password reset and checkout can each be hammered until something gives. Generated code almost never adds this on its own.

If you recognised your own problem somewhere above, that is the point. The audit is where you find out which one it actually is.

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$199~~$349~~promo

Send it over. We'll tell you what's wrong.

One fixed-price audit at $199 instead of $349. A video walkthrough, written findings and a firm quote on what it takes to fix.

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