Lesson 01
Hallucinated Architecture
AI loves suggesting the perfectly buzzword-compliant stack—Next.js, Supabase, Redis, workers—without any idea what your next 12 months of traffic or compliance actually look like.
Chili Pepper move: map user flows → data model → traffic forecast before picking infra. No micro-services until the product earns them.
Lesson 02
Security Theater
Copied webhook handlers with no signature checks, no idempotency, and no audit trail look fine in dev—and become investor-grade liabilities in prod.
Chili Pepper move: verified Stripe webhooks, idempotency keys, OWASP Top 10 checklist baked into every MVP scope.
Lesson 03
"Vibe Code" That Doesn't Scale
400-line React components, inline SQL, and 8s mobile loads are what happen when AI is allowed to design both UX and data access.
Chili Pepper move: TanStack Query, React Server Components, Prisma with pooling, and explicit boundaries between UI, API, and DB.
Lesson 04
Fake Validation
Demos with mocked OCR, fake AI, or static "results" pass pitch night and then shatter the minute real user data hits the system.
Chili Pepper move: one real end-to-end golden path with real data by week one. If five users can't succeed, it's not an MVP.
Lesson 05
Technical Debt Avalanche
"We'll add tests later" becomes "a one-line change silently broke login for 40% of users and we have no rollback."
Chili Pepper move: Vitest + Playwright, typed contracts, CI with preview deploys, and feature flags from day one.
Lesson 06
Brittle AI in Production
Hard-coded prompts and unbounded LLM calls quietly turn every button click into a surprise cloud bill and random downtime when providers change schemas.
Chili Pepper move: a resilient LLM service layer with caching, timeouts, circuit breakers, and cost caps.
Lesson 07
Investor Red Flags
VCs can smell AI-only prototypes: unclear IP, no migration plan, and zero path to $1M ARR. A shiny demo without a spine doesn't survive partner meeting.
Chili Pepper move: clean human-owned repo, Architecture Decision Records, and a 12-month roadmap tied to real unit economics.
Want us to roast your MVP before users do?
We'll walk through your stack, flows, and LLM usage, then send you a concrete 8–12 week plan to get to a production-grade, investor-ready build.