The 15-Minute Pre-Launch Review for AI-Built Sites
You don't need a QA team to avoid the most common launch embarrassments — you need fifteen disciplined minutes and a fixed order. This is that review. Run it exactly as written, right before anything goes public, every time. The order matters: cheap, high-yield checks first.
Minutes 0–3: The placeholder sweep
Project-wide search for: lorem, [, TODO, placeholder, example.com, localhost, href="#", console.log. Fix or consciously accept each hit. This three minutes catches the errors strangers notice first.
Minutes 3–6: Walk the site with the console open
Click every page and every primary action with the browser console visible. Red is a defect; investigate every one. Yellow warnings get thirty seconds of judgment each. A clean console isn't vanity — it's the absence of known-but-ignored failures.
Minutes 6–8: The cold visitor test
Open the site in an incognito window (fresh storage, no cached state) and use it like someone who's never seen it. Does it work empty? Does anything depend on data that only exists in your browser? This is where localStorage-backed "databases" and seeded demo content reveal themselves.
Minutes 8–10: Phone width
Narrow the window to phone size (or use device mode). Check: nothing overflows sideways, text is readable, buttons are tappable, the menu works. Most AI-generated layouts are desktop-first; two minutes here catches the worst of it.
Minutes 10–12: Break the forms
Every form gets: submitted empty, submitted with garbage, and submitted twice fast. You're looking for clear error messages, no duplicate side effects, and no data loss on failure. If a form talks to a server, kill the connection once and confirm the failure is visible and polite.
Minutes 12–14: Metadata and links out
View source on key pages: real <title>, real meta description, canonical pointing at the real domain, a favicon that isn't the framework default. Then click every external link and social icon — dead ones go to real destinations or get removed.
Minutes 14–15: The gut walk
One slow scroll through the whole site as a skeptical stranger. Anything that makes you wince, note it. You're not fixing in this minute — you're making the punch list honest.
Fifteen minutes buys you dignity
This review won't catch everything; nothing does. It reliably catches the failures that are visible in the first minute of a stranger's visit — which are the ones that decide whether they give your product a second one.