Protect your Lovable-built application with these essential security practices. From environment variables to RLS policies.
Verify your app follows these best practices automatically.
Lovable makes it easy to build apps fast, but security requires intentional effort. These best practices will help you ship secure applications without slowing down your development.
Never hardcode API keys, database credentials, or secrets in your code. Lovable-generated code often includes placeholder keys that must be moved to environment variables.
Create a .env file, add it to .gitignore, and reference secrets via process.env.YOUR_SECRET_NAME
const supabaseKey = 'eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...'const supabaseKey = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEYSupabase RLS is your primary defense against unauthorized data access. Without RLS, any authenticated user can read all data.
Enable RLS on each table and create policies that restrict access to the user's own data using auth.uid()
Check that authenticated users can only access their own resources. Lovable code often checks authentication but misses authorization.
Add user_id checks to all database queries and API routes
Let Supabase handle authentication. Custom auth implementations are prone to security vulnerabilities.
Use Supabase Auth hooks and components for login, signup, and session management
Lovable often sets CORS to allow all origins. Restrict this to your actual domain in production.
Set Access-Control-Allow-Origin to your specific domain, not '*'
Implement Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and other security headers to prevent XSS and clickjacking.
Add headers in your hosting configuration or Next.js config
Secrets become public and searchable
Add .env* to .gitignore before creating any environment files
Service role bypasses all RLS - anyone with the key has full database access
Only use anon key in client code, service_role only in secure server functions
Attackers can bypass any client-side checks
Always validate on the server, treat client validation as UX only
Following best practices is the first step. Verify your app is actually secure with a comprehensive security scan.
Scan Your App FreeIn Supabase dashboard, go to Table Editor, select your table, and click 'Enable RLS'. Then create policies for SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE that include '(auth.uid() = user_id)' or similar conditions.
Yes, the anon key is designed to be public. It only allows access permitted by your RLS policies. The service_role key is the one that must never be exposed - it bypasses all RLS.
Create two test accounts. Log in as User A, note the IDs of their resources. Log in as User B, try to access User A's resources by manually changing IDs in URLs or API calls. If you can access them, you have an IDOR vulnerability.
Last updated: January 2026