[matrixgard]

The last-mile stall is real and the security piece is usually what tips it from "almost there" to "never shipped." Environment variables and secrets is where I see the most shortcuts — things like hardcoded keys in the repo that worked fine locally, or a .env file that accidentally got committed because no one set up a proper .gitignore for the framework Cursor generated.

The CI/CD gap matters a lot too. AI-generated code tends to skip the boring scaffolding: no branch protection, no secret scanning in the pipeline, no way to roll back safely if something goes wrong in prod. That stuff is invisible until it isn't.

What's the actual blocker for the projects you're seeing stall — is it the infrastructure setup itself, or is it more that the founders aren't confident the code is production-safe?

[infiniumtek]

Surprisingly, I am seeing Vendor lock-in as the most frequent problem. Less technical users are building entirely on platforms like Rork and Replit and don't know how or have to pay to export the code. The costs with these platforms are crazy as well, compared to an app developed locally and hosted in something like Digital Ocean.