Vibe coding
Replit Agent to production: from workspace to a deployment that stays up
AI Cubed
September 9, 2026
8 min
Replit Agent produces a running app inside the workspace quickly and hides most of the machinery. Production is where the machinery reappears: Deployments have their own secrets, commands and ports, and the database the agent used at one point may not be the one it's using now.
This checklist walks the workspace-to-Deployment boundary in order and ends with a decision most people skip: whether to stay.
The checklist, in order
- Real git history with a branch. Done when: a checkpoint rollback can't lose work you care about.
- Secrets set for the Deployment. Done when: the deployed app reads every secret it needs and no code contains a fallback value.
- One real database, in your account, with stranded data migrated. Done when: you can point to it and say 'this one'.
- Explicit build and run commands; correct host and port. Done when: the Deployment starts and serves a request.
- Correct deployment type. Done when: the app's behaviour (stateless, stateful, static) matches the type.
- Auth configured for the custom domain. Done when: every auth flow works there on a phone.
- Schema as migrations, run on deploy. Done when: a fresh database from migrations matches production.
- Cost controls on paid calls. Done when: a runaway loop would hit a limit and page you, not your card.
- Tests and CI. Done when: a PR that breaks checkout fails.
- Stay-or-move decision, written down. Done when: you know why you're where you are.
- Monitoring and tested backups. Done when: you've been paged by a test and restored a backup.
Stay on Replit or move?
| If… | Then… |
|---|---|
| Launching this month, modest traffic, everything in your name | Stay. Fix the Deployment and ship. |
| Raising, hiring engineers, or expecting real scale | Move to a standard host (Vercel, Cloudflare, Fly) plus a managed database (Supabase, Neon). Any engineer knows the setup. |
| Costs are unpredictable under load | Move, or at minimum right-size the deployment type and add limits. |
| The app is a long-running process with state | Reserved VM if staying; a VM or container host if moving. |
What AI Cubed does about this
We run this checklist on Replit projects — audit in two business days including the stay-or-move recommendation, then the rescue. See finish my Replit app.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
- Replit documentation — Replit
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