The Rescue Run · Five working days · Fixed price
It exists, sort of.
Let's make it real.
For the app that demoed fine and then met production. Built with Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Cursor, or a contractor who stopped replying. In five working days it becomes a Rails app on your infrastructure, with tests, a runbook, and a recorded walkthrough for whoever comes next.
Who this is for
You built something real. It will not stay up.
The typical Rescue Run client is a founder or a small funded team with an app that real people are trying to use. It was built fast, mostly by an AI tool, and it got further than anyone expected. Then it started failing in ways that prompting cannot fix: the data model is wrong, the auth is wrong, a key is exposed, the job that runs at 3am fails at 3am.
You do not need a developer in the abstract. You need someone to read the whole thing once, tell you the truth about it, fix what is dangerous, rebuild what is structural, and leave you with something a normal developer can pick up.
If your app is not in Rails, and most are not, the run rebuilds the core in Rails. If the diagnostic says the app is worth repairing where it stands, I will say that instead, and quote it. See why Rails for the reasoning.
The five days
Teardown, triage, rebuild, deploy, hand over.
Every day ends with something you can look at. Nothing is invisible for four days and revealed on Friday.
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Day 1
Teardown
Read every file. Run the app. Map what it actually does against what you think it does. Inventory the dependencies, the data model, the integrations, the secrets, and who has access to what. Decide, with you on a call, which parts are the core.
Written findings by end of day. A ranked list: dangerous, structural, cosmetic. The scope for days two through five, in writing.
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Day 2
Stop the bleeding
Before anything moves, a real backup of your data, restored once to prove it works. Then the dangerous list: rotate every exposed secret, close the open endpoints, put the database behind something, remove the admin panel that has no login. This day exists so that if the run stopped here you would still be safer than you were.
Backup verified. Secrets rotated. A short note on what was exposed and for how long, so you can decide who to tell.
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Days 3–4
Rebuild the core in Rails
The parts that matter get rewritten properly: the data model with real constraints, authentication that is not hand-rolled, payments if you have them, background jobs that retry and tell someone when they fail. The parts that do not matter get left alone or cut, in writing. Rails 8, server-rendered, one database, standard gems.
A daily link to the new app on staging. An end-of-day note each day: what moved, what did not, what I need from you tomorrow.
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Day 5
Deploy and hand over
Live on infrastructure billed to your accounts. Data migrated. Tests on the paths that would cost you money. A written deploy and rollback runbook. A recorded walkthrough of the codebase for the next developer, whoever that turns out to be. Then a call where you drive and I answer.
Everything in the Handoff Standard, in a repo you own, on infrastructure you pay for.
Scope, honestly
What five days can and cannot hold.
A rescue is bounded by the diagnostic. It says which parts are the core, and the run rebuilds those. If your app needs more than one run, you will know before you pay for the first.
In a run
- Data model rebuilt with real constraints
- Authentication and authorization done properly
- Payments wired to your Stripe account
- Background jobs that retry and alert
- The one or two workflows that make the app the app
- Data migrated from what you have
- Deployed, tested, documented, walked through
Not in a run
- Every screen the AI generated. Most of them were never used.
- New features that were not in the original
- A redesign. It gets a clean interface, not a brand.
- Native mobile apps
- Load testing for a scale you do not have yet
- Being on call afterward. That is the Roundhouse.
Why this keeps happening
The tools ship the insecure version 45% of the time.
45%
When a model could choose between the secure and the insecure way to write something, it picked the insecure one 45% of the time. Veracode GenAI Code Security Report, July 2025.
2,038 critical
2,038 critical vulnerabilities, more than 400 leaked secrets, and 175 cases of exposed personal data across 5,600+ publicly reachable vibe-coded apps. Escape.tech, The State of Security of Vibe Coded Apps, October 2025.
Zero CSRF
69 vulnerabilities, 6 critical, across apps from five major AI coding tools. Every tool introduced SSRF. None implemented CSRF protection. Tenzai, December 2025.
None of this means the tools are bad. It means they optimize for the demo, and the demo is not the job. The longer version, with the sources →
Rescue questions
Before you book a rescue.
My app is not in Rails. It is React and Supabase.
Most of them are. The diagnostic tells you honestly whether the app is worth repairing where it stands or worth rebuilding in Rails, and roughly what each path costs. Sometimes the answer is that you should keep what you have and fix three specific things. You get that answer in writing either way.
Can I just keep prompting until it works?
Sometimes, and if that is working you should keep going. It tends to stop working at the point where the problem is structural rather than local: the data model is wrong, the auth is wrong, the thing that breaks is not in the file the model is looking at. If you have been circling the same bug for two weeks, that is the signal.
What if the rescue is bigger than five days?
The diagnostic exists to catch that before money changes hands. It says, in writing, what fits in a five-day run and what does not. If your app needs three runs, you will know that up front and can decide whether to do one, all, or none. Nobody discovers on Thursday that the price doubled.
What happens to my data during a rescue?
Day two of a rescue is a real backup before anything moves. Data stays in your accounts. I do not copy production data to my machine unless the work requires it and you say yes, and then it is deleted when the run ends. It is written into the terms.
Stop the noise.
Twenty minutes on a call, free. Show me the app. I will tell you whether it needs a rescue, a diagnostic, or three specific fixes you can make yourself.
Book the 20-minute callbill@atomiclocomotive.com · Austin, Texas · Usually replies same day