Crash rescue

Your app keeps crashing. We find why, not just where.

A crash that only happens sometimes is worse than one that happens every time, because nobody can reproduce it on demand and every fix is really a guess. Most of what we find tracing these down isn't exotic: an unhandled promise rejection killing the whole Node process, a component throwing during render with no error boundary around it, a serverless function running past its timeout under real load instead of the light traffic it was tested on. We reproduce it first. We don't patch a symptom until we've seen the actual stack trace.

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If you see this, this is you

The signals.
What they actually mean.

The app crashes in production but never on your machine.

Different load, different data, different timing. 'Works locally' means nothing about a race condition or a payload shape your local testing never produced.

One component throws and the entire page goes white.

React has supported error boundaries since version 16 specifically to contain this — a component that throws during render unmounts everything above it unless something catches it. Most vibe-coded apps have zero.

The server process dies and the platform just restarts it, silently.

An auto-restart hides the crash from you but not from the user who was mid-request when it happened. Nobody's looking at why it keeps happening because the symptom keeps disappearing on its own.

A serverless function times out under real traffic, not under testing.

Serverless functions have a hard execution ceiling. Code that's fine at 200ms locally can hit that ceiling once it's doing a real database round trip plus a third-party API call under production latency.

An unhandled promise rejection takes down the whole process.

Since Node.js 15, an unhandled rejection crashes the process by default instead of just logging a warning. Older tutorials and a lot of AI-generated code still assume the old, forgiving behavior.

The crash only shows up for one specific type of user or input.

Usually a null or undefined case nobody tested — the free-tier user, the empty cart, the account created before a schema change. The stack trace points at it immediately once we can reproduce it.

Our process

Five steps. 14 days.

012 days

Audit

We pull error logs, reproduce the crash locally against production-shaped data, and trace it to the actual line, not the last line in the stack trace that happens to be visible.

021 day

Triage

Keep, rewrite, delete. Crash-hunting usually skews 70/20/10 — most of the app is fine, the failure is concentrated in a handful of unguarded paths.

035–8 days

Foundation

Error boundaries added where React can throw. Promise rejections caught explicitly instead of relying on default behavior. Timeouts on anything calling a third-party API, with a real fallback instead of an unhandled hang.

042–3 days

Migration

We load-test the fix against traffic shaped like your real usage, not a happy-path smoke test, before calling it fixed.

051 day

Handoff

Documented, monitored — we set up basic error tracking if you don't have it, since a screenshot from a confused user shouldn't be your alerting system.

What we do with the code

Three piles. Honest splits.

Keep

70%

Everything not on the crash path — most of the app was never the problem.

Rewrite

20%

Unguarded render paths, unhandled async errors, anything calling a third party without a timeout.

Delete

10%

Dead error-handling code that catches the wrong exception type and silently swallows the real one.

Verdict

Who this is for.

Most crash reports we get start with "it's random." It's never actually random, it's a condition nobody's identified yet, because reproducing it requires production-shaped data or production-level concurrency, neither of which exists on a laptop. The fix is almost never a rewrite. It's finding the three or four unguarded paths where an error can propagate somewhere nobody's watching, and putting a boundary around each one. That's usually a week of focused work, not a rebuild. If you already have error tracking and can point to the exact stack trace, you might not need us, you need an afternoon with whoever's free. If you're debugging blind off user screenshots, that's the gap we close first.

FAQ

Questions founders ask.

Can you fix a crash you can't reproduce yet?

We reproduce it first, against data and load shaped like production, not against a happy-path test. Most 'random' crashes reproduce reliably once the actual trigger condition is known.

Do we need full test coverage before you'll touch this?

No. We fix the crash, and we'll flag if a lack of tests is why it shipped in the first place — but that's a separate, optional conversation, not a prerequisite.

What if it's a third-party service failing, not our code?

Common, and still fixable on our side — the fix is usually a timeout and a fallback path, so a slow or down dependency degrades instead of taking your whole app with it.

How do you know you've actually fixed it, not just hidden it?

We reproduce the original trigger after the fix and confirm it no longer crashes, plus load-test the surrounding path. A restart that hides the symptom isn't a fix.

Can you set up monitoring so we catch the next one ourselves?

Yes, basic error tracking is part of the handoff by default if you don't already have it.

Ask anything

Got a question about crash rescue?

Frequent questions

Valery Satsura

Valery Satsura

CEO · Start Matter · usually replies in minutes

Hey, I'm Valery. Ask anything about crash rescue. I usually reply in minutes.

Engagement shape

This is one of our services.

Same engagement, on the services index: Vibe Code Rescue from $500. Quote in 24 hours, audit free for 48 hours.

Other ways we engage

Not ready for a full rescue?
Start smaller.

Vibe-coded rescue

Your AI-built MVP is breaking. We rebuild without throwing it away.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Agency transfer

Your dev team stopped shipping. We pick up where they failed.

14 days · $500–$15K

Read the scenario

Lovable rescue

Lovable shipped fast. We fix what's actually broken underneath.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Bolt.new rescue

Bolt shipped it in the browser. We fix what breaks outside it.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Replit Agent rescue

Replit Agent built it fast. We fix what it broke along the way.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Cursor rescue

Cursor moved fast in your codebase. We check what it moved.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

v0 rescue

v0 built the UI. We build what it was never meant to.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Claude Code rescue

Claude Code followed most of your rules. We fix the rest.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Windsurf rescue

Windsurf doesn't exist anymore. The codebase it built still does.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Feature-velocity rescue

Every new feature breaks three old ones. We untangle why.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Database rescue

Your database is a mess. We fix it without losing data.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Test coverage rescue

Zero tests. We add coverage where a bug actually costs you.

14 days · $500–$12.5K

Read the scenario

Payments rescue

Stripe payments are broken. Usually it's the webhook layer.

10 days · $500–$8K

Read the scenario

Cost rescue

Your bill tripled and nobody knows why. We find the leak.

7 days · $500–$6K

Read the scenario

48-hour audit

Just the audit. No rebuild.

2 days · from $500

Written report on what your repo has and what it lacks. You decide who fixes it.

Request the audit

One feature

Ship a single feature.

1–2 weeks · $1.5K–$4K

Scoped to one workflow. Tests included. Your repo stays the way you left it.

Scope the feature

Fractional CTO

A senior in the room.

Monthly · from $1K

Architecture review, hiring help, code review on every PR. Half-day per week.

Start a conversation

Send us the repo.
We reply in 48 hours.

Read-only GitHub access is fine. One-page audit comes back inside two days. No charge for the audit.

Get a flat-price quote for App Keeps Crashing — We Find the Actual Cause

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