# Launch checklist for your AI-built app: four gates before strangers arrive

> Four launch gates for an AI-built app: store acceptance, tagged releases, a production-tested money path, and an owned launch day with a rollback.
> By Dave · 2026-09-10
> Source: https://otf-kit.dev/blog/launch-checklist-ai-built-app

Your AI-built app works on your phone, your friends like the demo, and now you want it in front of strangers. That gap — between "works for me" and "launched" — is where most vibe-coded apps stall for weeks, not because the code is bad but because nobody wrote down what "ready" means. A launch checklist fixes that: a fixed list of gates, each with a pass condition, that turns launch day from a cliff into a sequence of small verified steps.

This is the third kind of checklist your app needs, alongside the other two this series assumes you already have. [The MVP-to-production checklist](/blog/ship-ai-mvp-to-production-checklist) got the backend production-shaped; [the store submission checklist](/blog/app-store-submission-checklist-ai-built-app) covers the listing paperwork. This post covers the launch itself: the week before, the day of, and the week after — what to verify, in what order, and what "good" looks like at each gate.

## Gate one: both stores accept the binary

Before anything else, confirm the app can actually ship through review. [Apple reviews every app before it reaches the store, against five published sections — Safety, Performance, Business, Design, and Legal](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/). Read the Business and Legal sections against your app before you submit, not after a rejection: AI-generated content, data collection disclosures, and payment rules are the three places AI-built apps most often trip. A rejection costs you days; a pre-read costs you an hour.

On Android, plan around the review clock explicitly. [Google notes that certain developer accounts face thorough reviews taking up to seven days or longer in exceptional cases](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859751), so first-time accounts should submit early and treat the review window as part of the schedule, not an interruption to it. [Google's track system — internal testing, closed testing, open testing, pre-registration, then production](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859751) — is also your rollout ladder: each rung is a gate where real users touch the app before the next rung widens the audience. Use at least two rungs before production. The closed track that caught your crash is worth more than any internal test plan.

Pass condition: binaries submitted to both stores, review timelines on the calendar, at least one pre-production track with real testers on each platform.

## Gate two: releases are tagged and traced

Launch week is when you discover whether you can tell which build a user is running. If every crash report says "latest," you cannot. Tag every build that leaves your machine with a version and a release name, and wire those names into your error tracking before launch — retrofitting release tags during an incident is miserable.

This is mechanical, not philosophical. [Sentry defines a release as a version of your code deployed to an environment, and notifying it about releases lets you identify new issues and regressions, confirm whether an issue was resolved, and monitor the health of a fresh deploy](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/). [The release health view — crash-free users, crash-free sessions, adoption over the first 24 hours](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/) — is the dashboard you will stare at on launch day, so set it up on a quiet day instead. Record a baseline from your testing tracks first: you need to know what "normal" crash-free rates look like before launch traffic arrives, or every number on day one will feel like an emergency. [The error-tracking setup this assumes is already covered](/blog/sentry-error-tracking-react-native-production) — this gate is just confirming the release wiring rides on top of it.

Pass condition: every track build carries a version tag, error tracking shows per-release crash-free rates, and you have a baseline number written down from testing.

## Gate three: the money path works in production

If the app charges anything — and [pricing the first tier is a separate decision this series covers on its own](/blog/pricing-first-tier-ai-built-app) — the purchase path must be tested with production products before launch day. Sandbox success is necessary and insufficient: store product approvals, entitlement propagation, restore behavior on a second device, and what happens when a payment fails mid-flow are all production-only behaviors. Walk each one with a real account, on a real build, on both stores.

Then decide the rollout shape for the paid surface. The safest default is launching the app with purchases live but unpromoted: the paywall exists and works, but no onboarding screen pushes it yet. That decouples "the app launched" from "the monetization launched," so a billing bug costs you revenue experiments instead of launch-day reviews. Promote the paywall in the first update once production purchases have cleared cleanly for a few days.

Pass condition: one successful production purchase plus one restore on each store, failure paths walked, and a written decision on whether the paywall is promoted at launch or in the first update.

## Gate four: launch day has an owner and a rollback

AI-built apps ship fast, which means they can also break fast in front of an audience. Before launch, write down two things: who watches the dashboards in the first 48 hours, and what triggers a rollback. "Watch the dashboards" means the release-health view from gate two plus store vitals (both consoles surface crash and responsiveness numbers within a day or so). "Rollback" means knowing exactly which previous build you would promote and how long that takes on each store — Android track rollbacks are quick, iOS review makes reverts slower, so your iOS rollback plan deserves the extra thought.

Keep the first update small and ready. Launch day will surface something — a confusing empty state, a permission prompt at the wrong moment, a crash on a device you never tested. Having a fix-sized update already staged turns that discovery from a scramble into a routine. Freeze new features for the first week; the only code that ships is fixes for things launch taught you.

Pass condition: a named owner for the first 48 hours, a written rollback build per store, and a fix-sized update staged before launch day.

## The week after: measure, then decide

Launch is the start of the feedback loop, not the end of the project. In week one, collect three numbers: where users come from, where they drop off, and what crashes. Do not redesign anything yet — with launch-scale traffic, most early conclusions are noise. At the end of week one, pick exactly one improvement from the data and ship it in the staged update cadence you already built. Repeat.

Starting from owned code compounds here, because every gate above is easier when you can see the seams: the version tag, the purchase flow, the rollback build. Begin from the verified [templates page](https://otf-kit.dev/templates), run the four gates in order, and launch day becomes the least dramatic day of the project — which is exactly what you want it to be.

## Sources

- [Apple App Review Guidelines](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/)
- [Google Play: Publish your app](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859751)
- [Sentry: Releases](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases/)
- [OTF templates](https://otf-kit.dev/templates)