Class 5 Handout
Class 5 Key Lessons
Finishing Your Prototypes
- A prototype becomes a real app in eight steps: put it online, let people in, take money, add AI features, don’t break it, watch it, protect it, launch it. You don’t need all of them, so pick the ones your project needs next.
- Save your code to a private GitHub repo, and let Vercel put it live every time you push. Each change also gets its own preview link, so try it there before it goes to everyone.
- Keep secrets out of your code. API keys and passwords belong in Vercel’s environment variables.
- Write one test that walks through your app’s core flow the way a person would, and have it run on every change.
- Write it down: a README for people, an AGENTS.md for agents, and a STACK.md listing every service your app uses.
- Each part of the map comes with a copyable Codex prompt. Paste it in, and Codex will set that part up and stop only when it needs you.
Organizing Your Data
- Every fact has exactly one owner. Your database is the System of Record for app data, Stripe owns payments, and your CRM owns leads. Everything else is a copy.
- Write down where each piece of data comes from and who owns it. When a copy and its owner disagree, the owner wins.
- Change your tables only through migrations, so every change is a file in Git you can review and undo.
- Turn on row-level security for every table, so each person can only see their own data.
- Store files in storage and only their addresses in the database. Never store passwords yourself.
- Back up every day, and practice restoring a backup before you need it.
Class 5 Setup
By the end of class five, you should have:
- Your Impossible Challenge project saved in a private GitHub repo and live on the internet
- A STACK.md that lists every service your project uses, and who owns each kind of data