The Prototype Tax: Why AI Makes Production-First...

You've seen this before: a team builds a "quick prototype" in React — hardcoded auth, SQLite, no CI, manual deploys. The demo goes well. Management says "ship it." Then begins the real work: rebuilding everything that already worked — but on a real stack. For decades, this was the accepted rhythm of software development. Prototype fast, validate the idea, then rebuild properly. A reasonable trade-off — when the alternative was spending weeks on infrastructure before writing a single feature. But