afterbuild/ops
§ S-13/ongoing-maintenance

AI app ongoing maintenance — retainer engineering that stops Lovable and Cursor regressions.

Ship new AI-generated code every week without the same three flows regressing every sprint. We install a Playwright + Vitest maintenance floor, review every Cursor / Claude Code pull request, and keep CVEs, RLS policies, and Stripe webhooks from drifting.

price from
$1,500/mo
cadence
Weekly
SLA
2h
Start maintenance — $1,500/mo →Free diagnostic first
Quick verdict

AI app ongoing maintenance is a monthly retainer for Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, and Claude Code apps in production. Three tiers from $1,500/mo to $7,500/mo. Every retainer installs a Playwright + Vitest regression floor, runs senior review on every AI-generated pull request, patches CVEs on a weekly cadence, and delivers a quarterly architecture review. Hours roll over one month. Month-to-month, no lock-in. Industry benchmarks put AI-code vulnerability rates close to half (see our 2026 research) — the maintenance floor is how you stop that benchmark from becoming a production incident.

§ 01/diagnostic matrix

Symptoms an AI app maintenance retainer fixes

Every row below is a pattern we have shipped against on live retainers across Lovable, Bolt, and Cursor codebases. These are not hypothetical bugs — they are the weekly signal every AI-built app in production emits.

symptom → root cause → maintenance-floor fix
SymptomRoot causeWhat the retainer ships
Weekly regressions on the same three flowsAI builder regenerates nearby files, breaking shared utilitiesLocked Playwright smoke suite on signup, checkout, and auth — runs on every PR and nightly against production
Silent auth drops on deploySession cookie flags reset to insecure defaults when AI re-writes middlewareCookie-and-middleware regression test in Vitest plus a monitored synthetic login on five-minute cadence
Dependency CVE backlogNo one owns the weekly npm audit. Patches pile up until one breaks productionDependabot + weekly patch-release merge, majors reviewed and tested on a branch before upgrade
Stripe webhook misses after a redeployPreview URL webhook endpoints survive promotion to productionProduction-only webhook secret audit, signature verification test in CI, idempotency key enforced on every handler
Supabase RLS driftCursor adds a new table without policies; anon key reads every rowQuarterly RLS audit, policy linter in CI, alert on any table created without policies in the last 24 hours
Bundle bloat and slow first paintEvery AI-generated feature ships its own copy of date-fns, lodash, and a chart libraryMonthly bundle-analyzer report, tree-shake enforcement in CI, route-level code split audit
Error budget exhausted silentlySentry and uptime alerts go to an unread inbox, not a humanSentry → Slack, PagerDuty for critical, weekly error-rate report in the retainer summary
§ 02/retainer schedule

90-day AI app retainer engineer schedule

From onboarding week one to the first quarterly architecture review. The maintenance floor is installed by week two so every AI-generated PR lands in a harness, not a vacuum.

  1. W1Kick-off

    Onboarding & baseline audit

    Access provisioning, monitoring review, repo audit. We identify the first three ongoing-maintenance wins worth shipping before feature work starts.

  2. W2Ship cycle

    Regression harness install

    Playwright + Vitest maintenance-floor suite installed. Smoke on signup, checkout, auth runs on every PR and nightly against production.

  3. W3Ship cycle

    Weekly bug queue & AI-PR review

    Tickets filed Friday ship by next Friday. Senior review on every Cursor/Claude Code PR with 24-hour turnaround — catches silent regressions before merge.

  4. M1Report

    Monthly maintenance report

    Written summary: what shipped, what broke, hours used, CVE backlog status, regression test pass rate. Tier adjusted on first of next month.

  5. Q190-day

    Quarterly architecture review

    Drift check, RLS audit, dependency audit, performance snapshot. Keeps the Lovable/Bolt/Cursor-generated codebase on track as AI tools keep regenerating files.

§ 03/regression floor

The regression harness we install to catch AI regressions monthly

This is the exact Playwright + Vitest configuration we ship on every Growth and Scale retainer in week two. Smoke on signup, checkout, and auth runs on every Cursor / Claude Code PR and nightly against production. The maintenance floor is the reason regressions stop landing silently.

playwright.config.ts + vitest.config.ts
typescript
01// playwright.config.ts02import { defineConfig, devices } from "@playwright/test";03 04export default defineConfig({05  testDir: "./tests/e2e",06  fullyParallel: true,07  retries: process.env.CI ? 2 : 0,08  reporter: [["list"], ["html"], ["github"]],09  use: {10    baseURL: process.env.E2E_BASE_URL ?? "http://localhost:3000",11    trace: "on-first-retry",12    screenshot: "only-on-failure",13  },14  projects: [15    { name: "signup-smoke",   testMatch: /signup\.spec\.ts/,   use: { ...devices["Desktop Chrome"] } },16    { name: "checkout-smoke", testMatch: /checkout\.spec\.ts/, use: { ...devices["Desktop Chrome"] } },17    { name: "auth-smoke",     testMatch: /auth\.spec\.ts/,     use: { ...devices["Desktop Chrome"] } },18  ],19});20 21// vitest.config.ts — regression unit floor22import { defineConfig } from "vitest/config";23export default defineConfig({24  test: {25    environment: "jsdom",26    coverage: { provider: "v8", thresholds: { lines: 70, functions: 70 } },27    include: ["src/**/*.regression.test.ts"],28  },29});
What the AI app retainer engineer installs in week two — maintenance floor for Lovable, Bolt, and Cursor apps.
playwright.dev — CI patterns ↗vitest.dev — config reference ↗Veracode — AI code vulnerability benchmark ↗
§ 04/deliverables

What an ongoing maintenance retainer ships every month

  • 01Weekly bug queue with Friday-in / Friday-out cadence
  • 02Playwright + Vitest regression suite installed as the AI-app maintenance floor
  • 03Senior AI-PR review for Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Windsurf pull requests with 24-hour turnaround
  • 04Dependency patch merges monthly, majors reviewed before upgrade
  • 05CVE monitoring, secret rotation, and quarterly auth review
  • 06Sentry + uptime alerts piped to Slack; 2-business-hour SLA on critical incidents
  • 07Monthly maintenance report with hours used, regression pass rate, and CVE backlog
  • 08Quarterly architecture review to prevent drift and catch regressions
  • 09Runbook maintenance — every incident documented with a playbook for next time
  • 10Escalation routing to specialist engineers for work outside retainer scope
§ 05/pricing

Lovable app maintenance tiers — monthly retainer pricing

Pick the tier that matches your current usage. Move up or down on any first-of-month with no penalty. Hours roll over one month so nothing goes to waste.

price
$1,500/mo
turnaround
10 hours / month
scope
Small apps, low traffic, occasional fixes. Founders who mostly need an on-call safety net against AI regressions.
guarantee
Hours roll over one month. Month-to-month, no lock-in.
Start Starter→
most common
price
$4,000/mo
turnaround
30 hours / month
scope
Most common tier. Real traffic, weekly feature work, AI-generated PRs that need senior review before merge.
guarantee
Includes Playwright + Vitest floor, senior AI-PR review, quarterly architecture review.
Start Growth→
price
$7,500/mo
turnaround
60 hours / month
scope
Growing teams with high deploy cadence, multiple AI operators, and a reliability bar that extends past business hours.
guarantee
Evening + weekend coverage on critical incidents. Unlimited AI-PR review.
Start Scale→
§ 06/vs alternatives

Retainer vs hourly vs full-time hire

Ongoing maintenance is the middle option — senior coverage without the cost of a full-time hire and without the unpredictability of hourly freelance.

DimensionHourly freelanceFull-time hireAfterbuild Labs retainer
Monthly cost$200/hr · unpredictable$250k+ fully loadedFrom $1,500 fixed
AI-PR reviewAd-hoc, if you rememberYes (but single bottleneck)24-hour turnaround on every PR
Regression harnessNot in scopeDepends on hire qualityPlaywright + Vitest installed W2
On-call SLANoneWhenever they're awake2 business hours, 24/7 on Scale
Lock-inPer engagement12-24 months + severanceMonth-to-month, 30-day cancel

Pick AI app ongoing maintenance if…

  • →You shipped an AI-built app (Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, Claude Code) to production and now ship new code weekly
  • →Regressions keep landing on the same three user flows every time the AI builder touches a shared file
  • →You want senior AI-PR review before merge without hiring a $250k staff engineer
  • →You're between founder-builds-everything and hiring-a-real-team — and need the bridge to stay boring
  • →You need a Lovable app maintenance floor so next month's prompts don't undo last month's fixes
  • →Your uptime, Sentry, and CVE monitoring all go to an inbox no one reads

Don't pick this retainer if…

  • →You have a full-time senior engineer already owning production
  • →Your app is pre-launch and has no real users yet (start with Finish My MVP instead)
  • →You want 24/7 SRE-grade on-call with pager rotations (we quote those separately)
  • →You need a ground-up rebuild — that's App Migration, not maintenance
  • →You want a dev shop to own product direction (we own production, you own product)
“The regression harness they installed in week two caught a Cursor-generated auth regression before it hit production. That one catch paid for the entire first quarter of the retainer.”
Founder· healthtech Growth-tier retainer, month 3
§ 07/specialists

Retainer engineers who run Lovable app maintenance

A maintenance retainer is ongoing access to the specialists a one-off rescue would hire. You don't re-hire each month.

01
React debugging expert
Owns the weekly bug queue and the 2-business-hour critical SLA — hydration mismatches, effect loops, and 'one component blanked the page' tickets that hit maintenance retainers.
02
Security hardening expert
Runs the quarterly auth review, CVE monitoring, secret rotation, and RLS drift checks — stops AI-built apps from regressing back into 'anyone can read anyone's data' after a few months of prompts.
03
Database optimization expert
Catches slow Postgres queries, missing indexes, and connection-pool exhaustion before users feel them — the performance pass vibe-coded apps need once usage grows past prototype.
FAQ
What does AI app ongoing maintenance actually cost?
Three tiers. Starter is 10 hours per month at $1,500; Growth is 30 hours at $4,000; Scale is 60 hours at $7,500. Hours roll over one month. All month-to-month, no annual lock-in. Most Lovable and Cursor retainers start at Starter and move to Growth around month 3 as more lands on us — regression harness, AI-PR review, weekly bug queue, and CVE patch cadence.
How does the AI app retainer engineer catch Lovable and Cursor regressions?
Week two of every retainer installs a Playwright + Vitest regression floor on signup, checkout, and auth. Every Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or Windsurf pull request triggers the suite before it can merge. Senior review follows with a 24-hour turnaround. Industry benchmarks put AI-generated-code vulnerability rates near half — see our 2026 research; the harness plus review is how we catch the rest of the regressions too.
What's the response SLA on production-down incidents?
Critical issues (production down, data loss risk, auth broken for all users) get a 2-business-hour response on every tier. Standard work is queued weekly. Scale tier adds evenings and weekends for critical issues — the on-call engineer carries PagerDuty. Non-critical bugs, small features, and dependency upgrades ship on the Friday-in / Friday-out cycle.
Can I move between maintenance tiers month-to-month?
Yes. If Starter isn't enough in month two, move to Growth immediately. If usage drops, step down. Billing adjusts on the first day of the next month. No lock-in, no penalties, no 'we'll discuss internally' friction. The only hard rule is that hours roll over one month, not indefinitely — stops you from paying for dead hours and stops us from building up a debt.
Do you replace our in-house team or work alongside it?
Either. Many clients keep their team prompting in Cursor or Claude Code while we handle production concerns — monitoring, on-call, security reviews, deploys. Hand-off is built into every engagement. Every change and every decision is documented so you're never locked in. When you eventually hire full-time, we hand off clean with runbooks and a regression suite already in place.
What work falls outside the ongoing maintenance retainer?
Major new features, migrations, complex integrations, or full rescues are scoped separately as fixed-fee engagements. The retainer covers maintenance — bug fixes, small features, dependency updates, security patches, on-call, AI-PR review. If a ticket would consume more than 25% of the monthly hours, we scope it as a separate engagement and bill the retainer only for the hours it uses.
Do you review AI-generated pull requests from Cursor, Claude Code, and Copilot?
Yes, on Growth and Scale tiers. Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, and Windsurf all ship confident-looking PRs that hide regressions — missing signature verification, dropped idempotency keys, session cookies with wrong flags, RLS policies left off new tables. Senior review catches silent regressions, architecture drift, and security gaps before merge. Typical review turnaround is 24 business hours.
Which AI builders and stacks does the maintenance retainer cover?
Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, v0, Replit, Base44, Windsurf, and hand-written TypeScript or Python apps on Next.js, Remix, SvelteKit, Nuxt, FastAPI, or Django. If you're on an exotic stack (Rails, Laravel, .NET) we'll scope on the onboarding call — the floor suite is the same shape either way.
~1/2
AI-generated code ships with CVEs
industry benchmark
12+
Active maintenance retainers
↑ 100% renewal
2h
Critical SLA, business hours
90d
Architecture review cadence
§ 08/related scope

Related AI-app rescue services and regression fixes

Related services
Related AI regression fixes
Next step

Stop Lovable regressions landing monthly.

Tell us what's running and where you need help. We'll size an AI app ongoing maintenance retainer that fits and start next Monday.

Free diagnostic →Start a retainer (from $1,500/mo)