In most cases, fix the existing code — a full rewrite throws away the product decisions and working flows you've already validated, and it almost always takes longer than it looks. Rebuild only when the foundation is structurally wrong: no data model you can trust, auth and secrets baked into the browser with no real backend, or a stack that can't do what you're building toward. The reliable test is whether the problems are fixable in place (fix) or built into the shape of the app (rebuild) — and a senior engineer can usually tell within a day of reading the code.
Get a free triage of your MVP →The instinct after an AI-generated MVP starts creaking is to start over clean. It's usually the wrong call. A rewrite means rebuilding everything that already works — the flows you validated with users, the edge cases you quietly fixed, the copy and layout you iterated on — just to arrive back where you started, months later, with a fresh set of bugs. The messy parts you can see (duplicated components, tangled state, no tests) are almost always fixable in place. Reserve a rebuild for problems you can't fix without changing the shape of the app.
A few failures are structural, not cosmetic, and patching them is slower than replacing them. The clearest signals: there's no data model you can trust — schemas that don't match the code, no constraints, data integrity you can't recover; auth and secrets live in the browser with no server enforcing anything, so every user is effectively an admin; or the stack itself can't reach your goal — a fully client-side app that now needs multi-tenant billing, background jobs, or real integrations. When the foundation is wrong, keeping it just means paying to work around it forever.
In practice, most AI-generated MVPs need neither a clean rebuild nor a light polish. They need the front end and product flows kept — that's the part that's actually yours and hard to recreate — while the data layer, auth, and secret-handling get rebuilt properly behind them. Lovable, Bolt, v0, Cursor, and Replit are good at generating a convincing interface and weak at the parts users never see: real authentication, server-side validation, a coherent schema, safe secret storage. Rebuilding those layers is contained and fast; rewriting the whole app to fix them is not.
We start by reading the repo end to end — not the description of it. A senior US engineer looks at four things: whether there's a data model worth building on, where the auth and security boundary actually is, where the business logic lives versus generated scaffolding, and how much of the app is genuinely wired up versus dead code. That's usually enough to give you a straight answer — fix, rebuild, or hybrid — and a fixed scope for the work. The triage is free, the scope is fixed after a call, and you own the code and the accounts from day one.
Usually about a day of a senior engineer reading the actual code — the data model, the auth boundary, and how much is really wired up. That's what our free triage is: a real read of the repo, not a form. You come out of it with a straight recommendation and a fixed scope, not an open-ended estimate.
No. Exposed secrets and client-side auth are a security fix, not a rebuild trigger — you move the keys and the enforcement to a backend and rotate anything that leaked. It's one of the most common things AI-generated MVPs get wrong, and it's contained work. You'd only rebuild if there's no backend at all to move that logic into and the stack can't support one.
No — the goal is to keep what's actually yours: the product flows, the UI, the decisions you validated with real users. A hybrid rescue rebuilds the risky layers underneath (data, auth, secrets) while keeping the product on top. And you own the repo and every account from day one, so nothing is locked to us.
The parts users never see. Real authentication and authorization, server-side validation, a schema with actual constraints, safe secret storage, and anything involving background jobs or third-party integrations. The interface usually looks finished; the foundation underneath is where the risk sits — which is exactly why "it looks done" is a poor signal for the rebuild-versus-fix call.
Tell us what you need — a build, a rescue, or a contractor — and we'll come back with a clear next step.
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