Lovable, Bolt, and Replit App Due Diligence: Security, IP, and Investor-Readiness Checklist

Before you raise on, sell, or bet a company on an app built with Lovable, Bolt, Replit, v0, or Cursor, three questions deserve evidence: Is it safe? Do you have the necessary rights? Can someone other than the original builder maintain it? A working demo does not answer those questions. This checklist covers security controls, the contractual and copyright position of AI-assisted code, and operational readiness. It is general diligence guidance, not legal advice.

The tooling changes quickly, but the diligence questions do not. If you need the "does it work" layer, start with our vibe-coded software audit and production-readiness checklist. This post adds the security, legal, and investor layer.

Security: verify controls, not branding

Current first-party documentation supports four concrete checks:

• Database grants and policies. Supabase says a publishable or legacy anon key is designed to be exposed, but it is safe only when row-level security and least-privilege grants are configured correctly. Secret and service_role keys must never be shipped to the client. Test both allowed and denied operations for anonymous and authenticated roles. See the Supabase security guide and RLS guide.
• Platform scans have limits. Lovable now runs a basic security scan before publishing and offers deeper scans, but its own documentation says the basic scan focuses on common configuration and code patterns. It does not replace application-specific authorization tests. See Lovable's security overview.
• Public-project exposure. Lovable disclosed that regressions between 3 February and 20 April 2026 allowed an authenticated user with a public-project link to access that project's source and chat history. Lovable says private projects and Lovable Cloud were not affected, and that it fixed the issue and made public projects private. Review historic sharing settings and any secrets that may have appeared in affected public projects. See Lovable's incident report.
• Agent access to production. Replit confirmed a 2025 incident in which Agent deleted app database data before its current development and production separation existed. Replit says current Agent access is restricted to the development database and supports database rollback. See Replit's incident response and snapshot architecture.

The practical conclusion is narrower than any headline statistic: inspect the deployed system. Test authorization, database policy, secrets handling, dependency risk, recovery, and separation between development and production.

IP: contractual ownership is only one layer

The current terms generally allocate rights in output to the customer, but they differ on public projects, training, warranties, and third-party rights. Read the terms that apply to your account and keep a dated copy.

Lovable says you own customer data and AI output as between you and Lovable, subject to third-party rights, while disclaiming uniqueness and non-infringement. It may use customer data for model training unless you opt out prospectively. Replit says users retain their content rights, but content in a Public App is automatically MIT-licensed and may be used to improve or train models. Bolt says code created with Bolt is yours and may be used commercially. Vercel's AI terms treat prompts and outputs as customer content, while training choices depend on plan entitlement and settings. Cursor assigns its rights in suggestions to the customer, but disclaims uniqueness. See the current Lovable terms, Replit terms, Bolt commercial FAQ, Vercel AI terms, and Cursor MSA.

Copyright is a separate, jurisdiction-specific question. The U.S. Copyright Office's 2025 report says prompts alone generally do not provide sufficient human control, while human-authored expression, creative selection or arrangement, and creative modifications can qualify. Using AI does not make the whole work unprotectable. Record meaningful human design and implementation decisions, and review generated code and dependencies for provenance and license obligations.

Tool by tool, the gotcha that matters

The due diligence checklist

Three sections, each item as check, why, and the red flag.

Security

1. Database access control. Every table enforces row-level security and the policies actually restrict access, not a rule that allows everything. Why: the canonical failure is an open database behind a client-side key. Red flag: security left to a "scan passed" with no human check of the policies.
2. Secrets management. No API keys or tokens in the client bundle or committed to the repo; a real secrets store and server-side functions. Red flag: keys in frontend code or in git history.
3. Authentication and authorization. No endpoint trusts a client-supplied identifier without server-side auth. Red flag: any route reachable with just an app or user ID.
4. Dependencies. Known vulnerabilities are scanned and critical ones patched quickly. Red flag: no dependency scanning, stale lockfiles.
5. An independent security pass. A real penetration test or static and dynamic analysis, not only the builder's own scanner. Red flag: "the platform checks it for us" as the entire answer.

IP and legal

1. Ownership in the builder's terms. The tool grants you ownership and you have not published in a mode that open-sources the code. Red flag: proprietary code left in a public workspace.
2. Copyrightability. You know how much is purely prompt-generated versus human-authored or modified. Red flag: "the AI wrote all of it" with no human authorship trail.
3. Contributor agreements. Counsel has checked the agreements for every founder, employee, and contractor under the applicable law. Red flag: a contractor built core functionality and the written agreement is silent or ambiguous about IP.
4. Open-source compliance. Maintain a software bill of materials and license inventory, and satisfy the obligations of every included license. Red flag: unknown provenance for generated code or dependencies.
5. Training and data exposure in the tool. Record the plan, privacy settings, subprocessors, and retention rules in force when confidential material was submitted. Red flag: sensitive code submitted without confirming the applicable controls.

Investor-readiness

1. Bus factor. More than one person can operate and change each critical system. Red flag: nobody besides the original builder can confidently change the core.
2. Maintainability. The next team can extend it: documentation, sane structure, and not a pile of duplicated code. Red flag: docs over a year old, heavy duplication, no refactoring history.
3. Data handling and GDPR. Keep a data-flow map and records of personal-data categories, purposes, locations, retention, transfers, and processor contracts where required. Red flag: "we're compliant" with no supporting evidence.
4. Honest tech-debt backlog. A prioritized list of what needs hardening. Red flag: "we have no tech debt," which means unaware or not telling you.
5. Portability and differentiation. Prove you can export, build, deploy, restore, and operate the system without one person's platform session. Document what is genuinely differentiated. Red flag: no tested export or recovery path.

"A demo proves that one path worked once. Diligence asks who can access every path, who can recover the data, which rights the company holds, and who can maintain the system after the original builder leaves."

What this means before you raise or sell

If you built fast with an AI tool, that is fine, it is how a lot of good companies start now. The mistake is treating "it works in the demo" as "it is ready for someone to write a cheque against." Run the security pass, get the IP chain of title in order, and make sure a human can maintain what shipped. Those three are cheaper to fix before diligence than to explain during it. For the engineering hardening that sits underneath this, our prototype-to-production guide and the software quality assurance practice are where we take it from here.