How to brief a developer when your app was built with AI

Developers can work with AI-built code just fine. What slows things down is a vague request. “It’s broken, please fix” leads to a lot of questions and a cautious, higher estimate. A clear brief gets you a better price faster.

1. What the app does, in two sentences

Who uses it and what they do with it. For example: “A booking app for dog groomers. Customers pick a time, pay a deposit and get a reminder.”

2. How it was built

Name the tools: Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, v0, ChatGPT, and the services it uses, like Supabase, Stripe or Firebase. If you do not know, say so. The developer will find out.

3. What is wrong

For each problem, write three things:

• What you expected to happen
• What happens instead
• When it started, and what changed around that time

Screenshots and short screen recordings help a lot. So do error messages, copied as text.

4. What “fixed” looks like

Describe the result you want, not the technical solution. “Customers can log in on our real domain and stay logged in” is better than “fix the auth”.

5. How to see the problem

A link to the live app, test login details for a test account and, if you are comfortable, access to the code repository. Do not send real passwords by email. The developer will suggest a safe way to share access.

6. Your limits

Your budget range and your deadline. You do not have to share a number, but a range helps the developer suggest the right size of fix instead of the perfect one.

A short example

“Booking app for dog groomers, built in Lovable with Supabase and Stripe. Since we moved to our own domain last week, customers get sent back to a blank page after logging in. It works on the Lovable preview link. We need logins working on bookgroom.com this week. Budget is flexible for a quick fix. Test account details below.”

That brief can get an accurate estimate in one reply. You can use the repair form the same way.