# The Go-Live Checklist Run this after the site is live but before you share the link anywhere public. 15 minutes. Each item has the fix next to it. ## 1. It works on a phone Open the live URL on your actual phone, not your computer's narrow browser window. Scroll every page. Tap every button with your thumb. Fix if broken: paste a screenshot into your AI and say "this page breaks on mobile, here's a screenshot. Fix the layout so it works on a 390px-wide screen without changing the desktop look." ## 2. The name isn't "my-app-v2-final" Check the browser tab title, the big heading on the page, and any placeholder text ("Welcome to my app!", "Lorem ipsum"). The tab title is what shows up in bookmarks, search results, and shared links. Fix: ask your AI to "set the page title, description, and social preview (Open Graph) tags for this site. It's called [NAME] and it does [ONE LINE]." ## 3. A favicon exists The favicon is the tiny icon in the browser tab. Without one you get the default globe/blank page icon, which whispers "unfinished." Look at your own tab right now. Fix: ask your AI to "generate a simple favicon for this project and wire it in." Or make a 512x512 PNG of a letter on a colored square at favicon.io (free) and ask the AI to add it. ## 4. No link 404s Click every link and button on the live site, including the footer ones everyone forgets. A 404 is the "page not found" error; a live site with dead links reads as abandoned. Fix, the lazy correct way: tell your AI "list every internal and external link in this project, then tell me which ones could 404 or point to localhost." (localhost means "my own computer", a link that only ever worked for you.) ## 5. Someone else has actually loaded it Not you, not your browser where you're logged in to everything. Send the link to one friend and have them confirm it loads and they can do the main thing (sign up, click around, whatever the app is for). Half of "it's live!" failures are login walls, empty databases, or a form that only submitted for the owner. ## 6. You know where errors go When the site breaks for a stranger next Tuesday, how would you find out? Minimum viable answer: you know where your host's logs are (Vercel: your project, then the Logs tab; Netlify: Logs in the site menu; Lovable/Replit: ask their chat "where do I see runtime errors?"). Better answer: a contact link or email on the site so humans can tell you. ## 7. Your API keys are not visible An API key is a secret password your app uses to talk to paid services (OpenAI, Stripe, a database). If one is visible in your public code, bots WILL find it and spend on your card. This is the one item on this list that costs real money to skip. Fix: paste this prompt into your AI, in the project: > Security check before I share this app publicly. Go through the entire codebase and check: (1) Are any API keys, secrets, tokens, or passwords written directly in the code or in files that get shipped to the browser? (2) Is my .env file (the file that holds secrets) listed in .gitignore so it never goes to GitHub? (3) Do any frontend files reference secret keys that should only live on the server? List every problem with the file and line, explain each in plain English, then fix them and tell me which keys I need to revoke and re-issue because they were exposed. If it finds an exposed key: rotating it (getting a fresh one and deleting the old) at the service's dashboard is not optional. The old key is burned the moment it was public, even for a minute. ## The 60-second final pass - Phone: loads, scrolls, taps fine - Tab: real name, real icon - Links: zero 404s, zero localhost - One human who is not you has used it - You know where the error logs live - The security prompt came back clean (or keys rotated) All six? Share the link. Nice work.