Glossary: Production Terms for AI-Built Apps

Glossary for AI builders

The production engineering terms every vibe coder needs to know. Clear definitions, why they matter, and where AI tools get them wrong.

Vibe Coding

Building software primarily through AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude, Bolt, v0, Lovable) with prompt-driven iteration rather tha...

The 80% Wall

The point where AI-generated code stops being useful and production engineering becomes essential. Vibe coders can build roughly 80% of a product with...

Production Readiness

The state where a software application can safely handle real users, real data, and real traffic without breaking, leaking information, or losing mone...

Refresh Token Rotation

A security pattern where each time a refresh token is used to get a new access token, the old refresh token is invalidated and a new one is issued. Th...

Idempotent Webhooks

Webhook handlers that produce the same result whether they receive an event once or multiple times. If Stripe sends the same payment webhook twice (wh...

Staging Environment

A pre-production environment that mirrors your production setup (same infrastructure, same configuration, same data structure) where you can test chan...

CI/CD Pipeline

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment — automated systems that run tests, checks, and deployments every time code is pushed. CI runs your t...

App Store Review

Apple's process for evaluating apps before they appear on the App Store. Human reviewers check for compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines, in...

Provisioning Profiles

Digital certificates that authorize an iOS app to run on specific devices and be distributed through specific channels (App Store, TestFlight, Ad Hoc)...

Stripe Integration

Connecting your application to Stripe's payment processing API to accept payments, manage subscriptions, handle refunds, and track revenue. A complete...

OAuth Edge Cases

The production scenarios that OAuth tutorials don't cover: social login redirect failures when the callback URL is wrong, token revocation when a user...

Database Indexing

Creating data structures (indexes) that allow the database to find rows quickly without scanning the entire table. Without indexes, every query reads ...

Database Migration

The process of changing a database schema (adding columns, creating indexes, renaming tables) in a controlled, reversible way without losing data or t...