opinion
The AI-Built App Works. Who Looks After It Now?
An app built with AI has become useful enough to keep. Deciding who maintains it and builds what comes next should leave room to keep running the business.
When Does Building an App Become Another Job?
The app works. There is a list of things to add, and each improvement suggests another. Alongside that list sits the work the business was already there to do.
This is a decision worth making deliberately. You can keep control of what the software does while appointing someone else to take responsibility for its engineering. Building the first version does not oblige you to become its permanent developer.
An AI-built app can give a business something valuable to work from: a working expression of its processes, its requirements and the details that matter to the people using it. That work deserves to be assessed on its merits.
The next question is how much of your time you want to spend extending and looking after it. If the software supports a business whose main work lies elsewhere, taking on its ongoing development is a separate commitment.
What Should Happen Before More Features Are Added?
A technical review should establish what can stay, what needs attention and how the next planned features affect the existing design.
Start by explaining where the business expects to take the application. Which workflows will it need to support? Who will use it? What other information will it need to work with? Those answers give an engineer something concrete against which to assess the current version.
The database is a useful example. Its design determines how information is organised and how different records relate to one another. A structure that suits the first feature may need changing as the application takes on more of the business's work.
Adding each feature independently can leave that structure harder to understand and extend. A review should look across the application and the next planned changes together. It should also examine how the application is organised, how users sign in, what they can access and the security requirements of its intended use.
In a separate recent client evaluation, we reviewed an AI solution and compared our findings with Claude's audit of its own work. Across the two reviews, we identified 42 distinct issues:
- Claude found nine issues that Adaca missed.
- Adaca found 25 issues that Claude missed.
- Both found eight of the same issues.
Claude missed all six security vulnerabilities identified in that evaluation. Adaca found them during our review.
Claude also contributed findings our team had missed, so combining the reviews gave us a more complete picture. These results describe one evaluation. They support using AI review as an additional check, with an engineer responsible for assessing the findings and deciding what needs fixing. Asking the AI to audit its own work would have left important issues undiscovered in this case.
- Claude Only
- 9
- Both Reviews
- 8
- Adaca Only
- 25
One client evaluation. Findings supplied by Adaca, September 2026.
You should receive an explanation of the proposed work in terms you can judge. What problem does each change address? Which planned feature depends on it? What can reasonably wait?
That gives you a basis for deciding whether a focused refactor is worthwhile. Refactoring means improving the underlying structure of existing software while preserving its intended behaviour. It can be a stage between the first useful version and continued feature development.
What We Found in a Base44 Application
A construction equipment company brought us an application it had built using Base44. The business wanted to concentrate on construction equipment and have someone take responsibility for the technology.
Our review found a reasonable starting point. We scoped a short engagement to refactor the existing application, covering its architecture, database design, authentication implementation and other security considerations.
The database illustrated why that work mattered. It had been designed around the features required at the time, with insufficient consideration of how the technology would need to support the business over the longer term. Subsequent features had introduced further changes to the database structure, leaving it less coherent.
The useful starting point was still there. The work was to improve its foundations before continuing to extend it.
By September 2026, that initial refactor was complete and we were working on ongoing features for the business. Discussions had also extended to scoping further applications.
This is one engagement. It supports reviewing an AI-built application before deciding what needs changing; it does not establish that every application built with Base44 needs the same work.
What Should Stay With the Business?
The business should retain responsibility for priorities, investment and judging whether the software supports the work it needs to do.
You still know which process causes difficulty, which exception matters and which improvement would be useful next. A technical partner needs access to that knowledge. Handing over development works best when someone inside the business can make those decisions.
The partner's responsibility should be equally clear. Agree who assesses technical changes, coordinates development, tests releases and looks after the application once people depend on it. Establish how faults and future requests will be handled, including what is covered by the ongoing arrangement.
This is the practical application of Own Your Technology, Do Not Build a Tech Team. You can direct the product and engage the expertise needed to maintain it. Employing a software team is one possible arrangement, and it brings its own requirement for technical leadership and management.
Ownership also needs to be checked in the details. Before a handover, establish your rights to the code and data, your access to the relevant accounts and documentation, and any platform dependencies that affect future changes. These are questions to resolve for the particular application and contract.
Where Should the Handover Start?
Bring the current application, the next priorities and examples of how the business uses it to a technical review. A working app helps make those conversations specific.
Ask the review to answer three questions:
- What Can We Keep?
Identify the parts of the application that remain suitable for the intended work. - What Needs Attention Before We Extend It?
Connect proposed changes to current problems, foreseeable requirements and the next features. - Who Will Look After It?
Agree the responsibilities for development, maintenance, releases and business decisions.
The resulting plan should give you a defined first stage and a clear way to continue. In the engagement above, that meant a short refactor followed by ongoing feature development.
Building something useful with AI can be the beginning of software the business keeps improving. Who will take responsibility for that work while you concentrate on the business it serves?