Bolt.new Production Deployment - When Reality Bites

Here's what no one tells you: Bolt.new makes it stupidly easy to build apps, but deploying them to production is where dreams go to die.

Your app works perfectly in the WebContainer. The AI spun up a beautiful interface, connected to Supabase, added auth flows, everything runs smooth on bolt.host. Then you try to deploy to Netlify or Vercel and suddenly nothing works.

The Classic Build Failure Cycle

Day 1: "Deploy to production" - sounds simple enough.
Day 2: TypeError: fetch failed - ok, probably a URL issue.
Day 3: ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:3000 - wait, localhost doesn't exist in production?
Day 4: Fixed URLs, now getting Access to XMLHttpRequest blocked by CORS policy.
Day 5: Fixed CORS, but now process.env.SUPABASE_KEY is undefined.
Day 6: Environment variables set, but build fails with Module not found: Error: Can't resolve './components/SomeComponent' because the AI used inconsistent import paths.

Sound familiar? I've been through this cycle with every Bolt.new project I've tried to ship. The AI builds for the WebContainer environment, which has different assumptions than actual web servers.

The Core Problems

WebContainer vs Real Servers: Bolt.new's WebContainer runs Node.js in your browser. Real deployment platforms like Netlify and Vercel have different file systems, networking rules, and environment handling. What works locally doesn't translate directly.

AI-Generated Assumptions: The AI assumes certain npm packages are installed, makes API calls to localhost, and sometimes imports files with wrong case sensitivity. These work fine in development but explode in production builds on Linux servers.

Missing Production Configs: Bolt.new doesn't automatically generate production-ready configs. No production environment variables, no proper error boundaries, no CDN optimization. It builds for demo mode, not real user traffic.

Environment Variable Hell: The AI might hardcode database URLs or API endpoints that only exist in the WebContainer. Moving to production means reconfiguring every external service connection.

Sometimes your Bolt.new project is so thoroughly fucked that you need to take drastic measures. Here are the fixes of last resort when standard troubleshooting doesn't work.

Rebuild the Project from Scratch (But Smarter)

When the codebase is too tangled with WebContainer-specific assumptions, starting over is faster than debugging. But don't just copy-paste everything:

1. Export and analyze: Download your Bolt.new project and identify what actually works vs. what's WebContainer magic.
2. Separate concerns: Pull out the business logic, UI components, and API calls. The core functionality is usually sound - it's the integration layer that's broken.
3. Use a production template: Start with Create Next App or Vite configured for your deployment platform.
4. Port components one by one: Copy over your UI components first (they usually work fine), then add back the API integration with proper production URLs.

I've done this three times with complex Bolt.new projects. Takes 2-3 hours but saves days of debugging import paths and environment variables.

The Manual Deployment Escape Hatch

If Bolt.new's Netlify integration isn't working, fuck the automation. Deploy manually:

For Static Sites:

npm run build
## Upload the build/ or dist/ folder to Netlify manually
## Or use Netlify CLI: netlify deploy --prod --dir=build

For Next.js Apps:

npm run build && npm run export
## Deploy the out/ folder to any static hosting

For Node.js APIs:

## Push to GitHub
## Connect GitHub repo to [Railway](https://railway.app/), [Render](https://render.com/), or [Digital Ocean App Platform](https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform)
## Much more reliable than trying to debug Bolt.new's deployment magic

Environment Variable Audit and Cleanup

Download your project and grep for every environment variable reference:

grep -r \"process.env\" . --include=\"*.js\" --include=\"*.ts\" --include=\"*.jsx\" --include=\"*.tsx\"
grep -r \"import.meta.env\" . --include=\"*.js\" --include=\"*.ts\"

Create a production .env file with proper values for each variable you find. Half the deployment issues come from missing or incorrectly named environment variables that worked by magic in the WebContainer.

The Dependency Hell Fix

Bolt.new sometimes installs npm packages that don't work in production builds. Check your package.json for weird dependencies:

npm ls --depth=0
## Look for packages you didn't explicitly ask for
## Remove anything that seems WebContainer-specific
npm uninstall <suspicious-package>

Common culprits: packages that assume Node.js APIs exist in the browser, or development-only packages that made it into production dependencies.

Database Migration Strategy

If your database setup is fucked, the cleanest approach:

1. Export your data from Supabase (or whatever database Bolt.new set up)
2. Create a fresh database in production with proper connection strings
3. Recreate tables manually instead of relying on Bolt.new's auto-generated schemas
4. Import your data into the clean database
5. Update connection strings to point to the production database

Bolt.new's AI sometimes creates database schemas that work in development but have subtle issues in production (wrong indexes, missing constraints, etc.). A clean recreation fixes these.

The theme here: when Bolt.new's magic breaks, go back to standard web development practices. The AI built something that works, but it needs human intervention to make it production-ready.