How to Deploy Lovable Securely (2026)

Audit your environment variables

In Lovable, go to Settings > Environment Variables. Look at every entry.

Safe as client-side (VITE_):

• VITE_SUPABASE_URL: public, needed by the Supabase client
• VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY: designed to be public, but only safe if RLS is enabled

Must never be VITE_:

• Stripe secret key (sk_live_... or sk_test_...)
• OpenAI API key
• Supabase service_role key
• Any third-party key that doesn't have its own row-level or user-level scoping

If any secret key is currently prefixed with VITE_, rotate it now and move it before redeploying. A rotated key that's still in your bundle does nothing. You have to remove the VITE_ prefix and move the logic server-side.

Enable Supabase RLS on every table

Open your Supabase dashboard, navigate to Authentication > Policies, and check each table.

A table with RLS disabled has a red warning: "Row Level Security is disabled." That means any authenticated user can run SELECT * FROM that_table through the Supabase JS client and get every row back.

For each table, enable RLS and add at least one policy. The most common pattern for user-owned data:

-- Users can only see their own rows
CREATE POLICY "Users see own rows"
ON public.your_table
FOR ALL
USING (auth.uid() = user_id);

If you're not sure which tables exist, run this in the Supabase SQL editor to get a list of all tables with RLS status:

SELECT schemaname, tablename, rowsecurity
FROM pg_tables
WHERE schemaname = 'public'
ORDER BY tablename;

rowsecurity = false means that table is wide open.

Move secrets to Supabase Edge Functions

Any API call that requires a secret key needs to happen server-side. Supabase Edge Functions are the easiest option for Lovable apps because you're already on Supabase.

Create a new Edge Function via the Supabase dashboard or CLI, and set the secret key as an environment variable there (not in your Lovable app). Your frontend calls the Edge Function via a normal fetch; the function does the work with the secret key.

import { serve } from "https://deno.land/std@0.168.0/http/server.ts"

serve(async (req) => {
  const { prompt } = await req.json()
  
  const response = await fetch("https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions", {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "Authorization": `Bearer ${Deno.env.get("OPENAI_API_KEY")}`,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      model: "gpt-4o",
      messages: [{ role: "user", content: prompt }],
    }),
  })
  
  return new Response(await response.text(), {
    headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  })
})

Set OPENAI_API_KEY in Supabase > Edge Functions > Secrets. It never touches your Lovable environment variables.

Add security headers

Lovable's built-in hosting doesn't give you fine-grained control over HTTP response headers. If you're using it, the options are limited to what Lovable exposes in their dashboard.

For full control, export your app to GitHub (Lovable's Publish menu) and deploy to Netlify or Vercel. Both are free tiers for small apps.

On Netlify, add a netlify.toml to your repo root:

[[headers]]
  for = "/*"
  [headers.values]
    X-Frame-Options = "DENY"
    X-Content-Type-Options = "nosniff"
    Referrer-Policy = "strict-origin-when-cross-origin"
    Strict-Transport-Security = "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains"
    Content-Security-Policy = "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; connect-src 'self' https://*.supabase.co"

Adjust the CSP connect-src to include any third-party APIs your app calls.

Test your auth flows end-to-end

Lovable's auth UI is typically correct; protected routes redirect unauthenticated users. The gap is usually the data layer: the frontend hides admin features, but the Supabase queries behind them have no server-side access check.

Two tests to run manually:

Test 1: Unauthenticated data access Log out. Open DevTools > Console. Run:

const { data } = await window.supabase.from('your_table').select('*')
console.log(data)

If you get rows back, RLS isn't configured correctly.

Test 2: Cross-user data access Create two test accounts. Log in as user A, note the ID of a record you own. Log in as user B. Try fetching that record by ID directly. If user B can access user A's data, your RLS policies have an IDOR gap.

Scan before you launch

A manual review catches obvious issues. A scanner catches the things you didn't know to look for: missing headers, exposed patterns in your JS bundle, DNS misconfigurations, open CORS policies.

Run a CheckYourVibe scan on your staging URL before pointing your domain at production. The scan takes under 2 minutes and produces a prioritized list of issues with fix instructions for each one.

If your app is still on a Lovable subdomain (something like yourapp.lovable.app), scan that. If you've set up a custom domain, scan the custom domain.