Proven Engineering Craftsmanship

Case Studies & Rescues

Read real technical post-mortems of AI-built applications taken from fragile prototypes to secure, high-scale production systems.

Security & Compliance

Bolt.new · Next.js · Supabase · Tailwind

⏱ Resolved in 4 Days

Quarantining Leaked Service Keys & Securing Auth in a Fintech MVP

Client: B2B Financial Analytics Platform

Key Metric

100% Vulnerability Remediation

System Reliability

SOC2-Ready Architecture

The Problem & Bottleneck

The founder built an impressive analytics dashboard using Bolt.new. However, during a third-party security review, they discovered that the client-side JavaScript bundle included the Supabase service_role secret key, and Row Level Security (RLS) policies were never configured — allowing any authenticated user to query all tenant databases.

The Technical Solution

A matched Skilancer Principal Engineer immediately rotated the compromised service keys, migrated all sensitive queries from client components to authenticated Server Actions, instituted strict tenant-isolated PostgreSQL RLS policies, and set up automated security linting in CI/CD.

Production Impact

✓Zero client-side secrets exposure; zero unauthorized data access.
✓Tenant isolation enforced at the PostgreSQL database level.
✓Passed founder's investor due diligence technical audit.
✓Delivered in 4 business days under a fixed audit & sprint package.

Performance & Cost Optimization

Cursor · Next.js · Node.js · OpenAI · Redis

⏱ Resolved in 10 Days

Eliminating Serverless Timeouts & Slashing 60% of OpenAI API Spend

Client: AI Legal Document Assistant

Key Metric

60% Reduction in API Bills

System Reliability

0 Timeouts (Down from 18%)

The Problem & Bottleneck

As active users grew past 800, the app began crashing with 30-second Vercel serverless function timeouts during heavy multi-page PDF document analysis. Furthermore, uncontrolled React component re-renders were triggering repeated duplicate calls to GPT-4, causing cloud costs to exceed $4,500/month unexpectedly.

The Technical Solution

The Skilancer engineer decoupled synchronous API handlers into an asynchronous background queue using Redis and BullMQ on Cloud Run. They implemented prompt chunking, aggressive response caching, and semantic deduplication to prevent redundant LLM calls.

Production Impact

✓Average user perceived latency dropped from 28s to 180ms with streaming feedback.
✓Monthly LLM API costs dropped by 60% ($2,700/month in recurring savings).
✓Zero serverless timeout errors across 25,000+ monthly document extractions.
✓Structured error logging and Prometheus metrics dashboard deployed.

Database & Payments Reliability

Lovable · Stripe · PostgreSQL · Prisma

⏱ Resolved in 7 Days

Fixing Stripe Webhook Deadlocks & 1.8s Slow Queries Under Traffic

Client: Creator Subscription Marketplace

Key Metric

99.99% Payment Reliability

System Reliability

DB Latency: 1.8s → 22ms

The Problem & Bottleneck

During a viral product launch, the marketplace started double-charging subscribers and failing to unlock premium creator access. Stripe webhooks were failing due to non-idempotent handlers and database deadlocks caused by unindexed relational queries under 500 concurrent checkouts.

The Technical Solution

The Skilancer expert engineered atomic database transactions with Prisma, implemented idempotent webhook processing with Redis locks, added targeted B-tree indexes on high-cardinality foreign keys, and configured PgBouncer for efficient connection pooling.

Production Impact

✓Payment processing reliability reached 99.99% with zero duplicate charges.
✓Database query execution latency dropped from 1,840ms to 22ms.
✓Successfully handled a 4x traffic surge on the subsequent launch campaign.
✓Comprehensive automated integration test suite implemented for Stripe webhooks.

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