How do you stop a throwaway project from turning into production code?
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This is a huge trap with AI coding right now.
It's so easy to prompt a quick prototype together over a weekend but if it gains any traction you're suddenly stuck maintaining a codebase full of logic you barely understand.
I try to force myself to write clean architecture docs early if I think an app has any long-term potential. Otherwise, refactoring later takes twice as long as building it properly from scratch.
Do you set strict rules for when a quick script needs a full rewrite?
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Writing the architecture docs early before anyone depends on the prototype is a solid habit. Would your trigger for a rewrite be the first paying user or a certain number of users?
My trigger turned out to be neither users nor revenue, it was a dependency breaking. My earlier music app was a fast build on top of an unofficial API, and when that API died, patching made no sense, so I rewrote it from scratch. The part worth planning for: keep the identity, throw away the code. The new app kept the same bundle id and the same store listing, so the existing users and reviews moved over as an update. If I had to set a rule in advance, it would be this: the day you cannot explain how a core flow works, or the day it depends on something you do not control, the next feature waits until that part is rebuilt.