Step 1 (Week 1): Define and Design Your MVP Scope

The most expensive mistake in MVP development is building the wrong thing fast. Week 1 at Revex is entirely dedicated to alignment — not code.

Day 1–2: The One-Page Product Brief

Start by writing a one-page product brief that answers four questions:

1. What does this product do?
2. Who uses it first?
3. What is the one action a user takes that proves the core value?
4. What is explicitly out of scope for v1?

Revex uses this document as a contract between the product team and the development team. If a feature isn't in the brief, it doesn't get built in Week 1–4.

Day 3–4: Wireframes in Lovable

This is where Lovable earns its place. Open Lovable and use its AI prompt interface to generate your initial UI screens. Lovable generates React-based components and full page layouts from plain English prompts.

Example prompt: "Create a SaaS dashboard for a project management app with a left sidebar navigation, a task list view, and a top header with user profile. Use a clean, minimal design with a blue and white color scheme."

Within 2–3 minutes, Lovable produces a working, editable React UI. Revex teams typically iterate on 4–6 screens during Days 3 and 4, covering: onboarding flow, core feature screen, settings page, and empty states.

Day 5: Stakeholder Review and Freeze

Hold a 60-minute review. Get explicit sign-off on the wireframes. Freeze scope. No new features enter the build until after launch.

Step 2 (Week 2): Build the Frontend with Lovable

With your scope frozen and wireframes approved, Week 2 is full-speed frontend development using Lovable as the primary build environment.

Setting Up Your Lovable Project

1. Create a new project in Lovable.
2. Connect it to a GitHub repository (Lovable supports direct GitHub sync).
3. Set your design tokens: primary color, font family, border radius. Lovable allows you to define these globally so every generated component stays consistent.

Building Core Screens

Use Lovable's prompt interface to build each screen from your Week 1 wireframes. Work screen by screen, not feature by feature. This keeps your prompts focused and your outputs clean.

Recommended screen build order:

1. Authentication screens (login, signup, forgot password)
2. Onboarding flow
3. Core feature screen (the primary value-delivery screen)
4. Settings and account management
5. Empty states and error states

When to Bring in Cursor

Lovable handles UI generation exceptionally well. But when you need custom logic — form validation, conditional rendering, API call structure, or complex state management — switch to Cursor.

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor built on VS Code. Pull your Lovable-generated React code into Cursor and use its inline AI chat (Cmd+K or Ctrl+K) to write or modify specific functions.

Example Cursor workflow:

• Open the relevant component file in Cursor.
• Highlight the function you want to modify.
• Press Cmd+K and type: "Add form validation that checks for a valid email format and a password minimum of 8 characters. Show inline error messages."
• Review the output, accept or edit, done.

Step 3 (Week 3): Connect Your Backend with Supabase

A frontend without data is a prototype. Week 3 is where your MVP becomes a real product by connecting it to a live backend using Supabase.

Why Supabase for No-Code MVPs

Supabase is an open-source Firebase alternative that gives you a PostgreSQL database, authentication, file storage, and auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs — all without writing backend code. Revex uses Supabase on the majority of its rapid MVP builds because it integrates directly with React-based frontends and has a generous free tier that handles early-stage traffic easily.

Day 1–2: Database Schema Setup

1. Log in to Supabase and open your project.
2. Use the Table Editor to create your core tables. For most SaaS MVPs, you'll need: users, one or two core entity tables (e.g., projects, tasks), and a settings table.
3. Define relationships and foreign keys using the visual editor — no SQL required for basic schemas.
4. Enable Row Level Security (RLS) from Day 1. This ensures users can only access their own data. Supabase provides policy templates to make this fast.

Day 3: Connect Frontend to Supabase

In Cursor, install the Supabase JavaScript client:

npm install @supabase/supabase-js

Create a supabase.js config file with your project URL and anon key (both found in your Supabase dashboard under Settings > API). Use Cursor's AI to scaffold your data-fetching functions — prompts like "Write a function to fetch all projects belonging to the current authenticated user from Supabase" produce accurate, working code in seconds.

Day 4–5: Authentication Flow

Supabase Auth handles email/password login, magic links, and OAuth providers (Google, GitHub) out of the box. Connect your Lovable-generated auth screens to Supabase Auth using the supabase.auth.signUp() and supabase.auth.signInWithPassword() methods. Use Cursor to wire these into your existing form components.

When to Consider Bubble.io Instead

If your MVP requires complex multi-step workflows, heavy relational data logic, or non-developer stakeholders who need to edit the backend visually, Revex sometimes recommends Bubble.io as an alternative to the Lovable + Supabase stack. Bubble.io handles frontend and backend in a single visual environment, which reduces handoff complexity. The tradeoff is less flexibility in the frontend design layer and a steeper learning curve for custom UI.

Revex's rule of thumb: Use Lovable + Cursor + Supabase when you want code-quality output with developer flexibility. Use Bubble.io when the primary operator is a non-technical founder who needs to manage the app independently post-launch.

Step 4 (Week 4): Test, Polish, and Deploy on Vercel

Week 4 is about getting your MVP from "it works" to "it ships." Revex follows a structured QA and deployment process that consistently gets products live by Day 28.

Day 1–2: Functional QA

Test every user flow end-to-end. Use this checklist:

• New user signup and onboarding completion
• Core feature creation, editing, and deletion
• Authentication edge cases: wrong password, expired session, password reset
• Empty states (what does the app show before a user has any data?)
• Mobile responsiveness on iOS and Android screen sizes
• Error handling: what happens when an API call fails?

Use Cursor to fix bugs as they surface. The AI context window in Cursor means you can paste an error message directly and ask for a fix — most runtime errors are resolved in under five minutes.

Day 3: Performance and UX Polish

Run your app through Google Lighthouse (built into Chrome DevTools). Target a performance score above 80 and an accessibility score above 90 before launch. Common quick wins:

• Add loading states to all async data fetches
• Optimize image sizes (use WebP format)
• Add aria-labels to interactive elements
• Ensure color contrast meets WCAG AA standards

Day 4: Deploy to Vercel

Vercel is the fastest way to deploy a React application. Here's the exact process Revex uses:

1. Push your final code to GitHub.
2. Log in to Vercel and click "Add New Project."
3. Import your GitHub repository.
4. Set your environment variables (Supabase URL and anon key) in the Vercel dashboard under Settings > Environment Variables.
5. Click Deploy. Vercel builds and deploys your React app in 2–4 minutes.
6. Connect your custom domain (optional but recommended for investor demos).

Vercel's free tier handles up to 100GB of bandwidth per month — more than sufficient for MVP-stage traffic.

Day 5: Soft Launch and Feedback Collection

Send your MVP to 5–10 target users on Day 28. Use a tool like Hotjar (free tier) to record sessions and identify friction points. Do not build new features based on Day 1 feedback. Observe, document, and prioritize for v1.1.