Dufloth ia.br

RescueBuilt fast with AI, and now it has to hold

It works. That isn't the same as ready.

You built it in Lovable, Bolt or Cursor, got further than you expected, and now there are paying customers on it. We read all of it — the part the model never had to read — and tell you what breaks first. A rewrite is almost never the answer, and we'll say that too.

Get in touch 2 to 3 weeks · R$18,000 to R$35,000, fixed · half on signing

Who it's for

Founders and product owners, usually not deeply technical, who built something real and got customers with it. The product is not a prototype any more — it takes money, or holds somebody else's data, or an operation now depends on it — and the speed that got it here has stopped working.

The clearest sign you're in the right place: you are afraid to change it, and the fear is well founded rather than superstition.

The problem

Working and ready are different states, and the gap between them is invisible from the outside. The screens are there, the demo lands, the first customers are happy. What is missing is everything nobody thought to ask for, because the tool never raised it: whether one user can read another's data, whether the keys are in the repository, what the payment webhook does when it arrives twice, whether the backup restores, what the law requires of the data you have started keeping.

The second problem is worse than the first. Nobody has a model of the whole thing — not you, not the next developer, and not the model, which only ever saw a slice. So each change costs more than the last, and the person who discovers the breakage is a customer. That is the wall, and it arrives suddenly after a stretch where everything was working.

What we do

We start by reading it, all of it, which is the part the model never had to do. What comes back is an honest read in plain language: what will break, what is already leaking, what is merely untidy and can wait, and what has to be true before you take another payment. Fixed scope, and it stands on its own — if you take the document and act on it elsewhere, it did its job.

Then the hardening, in the order the risk demands rather than the order the list is written in. Access control on every path that returns somebody's data. Secrets out of the repository and out of history. The unhappy paths the tool never wrote — the duplicate webhook, the failed charge, the two people editing the same record. Errors that fail closed instead of guessing. Enough tests that the next change tells you when it broke something old, which is the thing that makes the fear go away.

A rewrite is usually the wrong answer and we will say so. It throws away the one thing the code has that no plan has, which is that it works and has customers on it. Sometimes a piece has to be replaced, and when it does we replace that piece while the rest keeps running. What you own at the end is the code, the tests and the documentation, and a build that refuses what breaks.

What we hear

  • We built it in Lovable, it works, and now nobody wants to touch it.

  • Any user can read another user's data. We found out by accident.

  • The API keys are in the repository, and the repository has been shared.

  • We're about to take payments and I can't tell you whether the data is safe.

  • Every new feature breaks two that used to work.

Why not just

  • Rebuild it from scratch.

    Usually not. A rewrite discards the only real asset in the room — software that works and has customers using it — in exchange for a plan, and plans are optimistic. It also takes long enough that the product stands still while a competitor does not. Some part of it may genuinely need replacing, and we will tell you which part; replacing that piece while the rest keeps serving is a different and much smaller job.

  • Hire a developer and hand it over.

    Eventually, yes, and that is the right place to end up. But handing an unread codebase to a new hire spends their first months on the audit you never had, and they will reach the same conclusions with less standing to act on them. The cheaper order is the other way round: get it read and hardened, then hand over something with tests and documentation — which is also a far easier thing to recruit for.

Why this isn't our opinion

28.65 million new hardcoded secrets landed in public GitHub commits in 2025 — up 34% year on year, the largest single-year jump recorded.

GitGuardian, State of Secrets Sprawl, 2026

What you have, and what would break first

Fixed scope, fixed price, agreed before it starts. We read all of it, which is the part the model never had to do.

What you get: a plain-language summary you could forward to somebody non-technical, every finding with the evidence for it, what is already leaking, what is merely untidy and can wait, what has to be true before you take another payment, and a prioritised order to fix it in.

It stands on its own. If you take the document and act on it elsewhere, it did its job. It is also the honest way to find out whether the answer is a rewrite — and it usually is not.

The MVP proved the idea. Now it has to carry the business.

The same work, further along: a product that has hit its limit — built with AI, by a freelancer, or by one technical founder — moved onto a footing that takes the next two years, without stopping the operation and without losing the customers already on it.

When it applies: the database will not take the next step; the thing you need to change is the thing nobody understands; onboarding a second developer is impossible; the cost of running it does not survive ten times the users.

Common questions

  • Should we just rebuild it?

    Usually not, and we will say so even though the rebuild is the bigger job for us. A rewrite trades software that works and has customers on it for a plan, and it stands the product still while a competitor does not. Some piece may genuinely need replacing; the diagnostic tells you which one, and replacing one piece while the rest keeps serving is a much smaller job.

  • Is it embarrassing that we built it this way?

    No, and the question comes up often enough to be worth answering. You got a working product in front of real customers, which is the hard part of a company and the part most people never reach. The state of the code is the ordinary cost of having done that quickly.

  • What if you find something really bad?

    You hear it immediately, not at the end in a document. If it is the kind of thing that means you should stop taking payments until it is fixed, we will tell you that on the day we find it, which is the only version of this that is worth paying for.

  • Can we just have the diagnostic and stop there?

    Yes, and it is written to make that possible. It is fixed scope, priced on its own, and in plain enough language to hand to a developer who is not us. If you act on it with your own team or somebody else's, it did its job.

What we do

  • Adopt

    AI inside the processes you already run

  • Engineer

    Your development team using AI with a method

  • Rescue

    Built fast with AI, and now it has to hold

Tell us what's broken. The answer may be that you don't need us.

The call is free and ends in a yes, a no, or "you can handle this yourselves". The person who answers is the person who would do the work. We work remotely across Brazil, and in person in the north of Rio Grande do Sul — the agroindustry and the cooperatives there are close enough to visit, and a consultancy in São Paulo is not going to.

Get in touch