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The Post-Build Cliff

The Post-Build Cliff

Caution / Read before deploy

What happens after the thing you vibe-coded actually works.

A small, free, opinionated course for non-technical founders shipping AI-built software into the real world. Written by people who fell off the cliff first.

Start with the cliff → Skip to the hiring line ↗
Fig. 01 · Cross-section Elev. ~ build → prod ↓ steep gradient
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Cliff, n.
The gap between "it works on my screen" and "it survives a real user, a real domain, a real tomorrow morning." Most "build an app in 20 minutes" videos end where this course begins.

Five ways founders fall off.

Scroll to walk through each →
Fall · 01

Secrets in a public repo.

You pushed your .env to GitHub. Your OpenAI key, Stripe key, and database password are now scraped within five minutes. Bots watch the GitHub event firehose for new keys; the rotation playbook is the only path back.

Fall · 02

Data loss with no backup.

The platform you built on (Replit, Bolt, Lovable) lost or migrated state. There was no export. The work is gone. The first backup you make doesn't count — only the first one you've successfully restored from does.

Fall · 03

No version control.

You can't roll back a bad change because every change overwrote the last one. Git isn't an engineering luxury — it's the only honest record of what you built and why.

Fall · 04

Deploys that break in prod but not preview.

Environment differences you didn't know existed. Different node versions, different env vars, different timezones. The bug isn't in your code — it's in the gap between two machines you treated as identical.

Fall · 05

A user submits real data and you don't know what applies.

GDPR? PII? Payment data? The moment a real human's information lives in your system you're technically liable, whether you knew the rules or not. Compliance is a line you cross, not a feature you ship.

You don't need to become an engineer. You need to know exactly where your competence should stop.
— The thesis of this course

Three modules

~ 90 minutes total · Read in any order
01
Module One

The Cliff

What the post-build cliff actually is. Lost data, exposed keys, public repos, broken 11pm deploys — and how to spot you're standing near the edge.
You'll learn Reading .gitignore
Private vs public repos
What a secret is
Why staging exists
02
Module Two

Minimum Competence

The smallest viable curriculum for a founder. Five non-negotiables, a "not yet" list of things you're tempted to learn but shouldn't, and the fastest way through each.
You'll learn Just-enough git
Env vars in production
Deploy from a branch
Reading logs
Restoring a backup
03
Module Three

The Hiring Line

Where learning stops being an investment and starts being a hiring decision. How to spot the line, and how to evaluate someone you can't out-code.
You'll learn Five hire-now signals
Contractor vs fractional CTO
Agency vs full-time
Four interview questions
Field note · 01

Free, forever.

No email gate, no upsell, no "premium tier." If you found this useful, send it to one founder who needs it more than you did.

Field note · 02

Living document.

Tools change fast. Lessons live on GitHub as plain markdown. Spotted something stale? Open a PR — your name goes in the contributors list.

Field note · 03

Searchable, offline.

Hit ⌘K from anywhere. Search runs in the browser — your queries don't leave your laptop.