I've watched founders burn 6 months and $40,000 on "scalable architecture" for a product that had zero users.
I've also shipped 7 production SaaS products in 14 days each, with real users, real payments, and real infrastructure.
The difference isn't talent. It's decisions.
Here are the overengineering traps I see constantly — and what to do instead.
Trap 1: Separate microservices from day one
You don't have traffic. You don't have a team. You don't have a reason.
A monolith Next.js app handles everything you need until you have 10,000 daily active users and a concrete bottleneck. Split when you have a real, current problem — not a hypothetical future one.
Do this instead: One Next.js 16 app. Server Actions for mutations. API routes only for external webhooks.
Trap 2: Custom auth from scratch
Every week someone rebuilds JWT refresh logic, session management, and OAuth flows. This is a known problem with known solutions.
Supabase Auth handles email, OAuth (Google, GitHub, etc.), magic links, MFA, and session management. It's free. It's production-tested. Stop reinventing it.
One rule: use auth.getUser() server-side — not getSession(). getSession reads from a cookie that can be spoofed. getUser hits the Supabase server and actually verifies.
Trap 3: Building the billing system
Stripe exists. Use it.
Your job: create a price in Stripe, redirect to Stripe Checkout, handle the webhook, store the subscription status in your DB. That's it.
One non-negotiable: stripe.webhooks.constructEvent() to verify every webhook signature. If you skip this, anyone can POST fake payment confirmations to your endpoint.
Trap 4: Skipping analytics until "later"
Later means never.
PostHog takes 10 minutes to install. The free tier is generous. You get session recordings, event tracking, feature flags, and funnels.
Install it on day one. The data you don't collect from the first user is gone forever.
Trap 5: No input validation
Zod. Every server-side input. Before any DB write.
This isn't optional once you're in production. Malformed data gets in, silent bugs compound, and you spend a weekend writing a data migration.
The stack that actually ships
- Next.js 16.2 — App Router, Server Actions, Turbopack
- TypeScript 5.x strict mode — catches bugs before they go live
- Supabase — auth + DB + storage in one service
- Stripe — payments, subscriptions, webhooks
- Tailwind CSS v4 + Shadcn/UI — production UI without fighting CSS
- PostHog — analytics from day one
- Sentry — error tracking before the first deploy
- Vercel — deployment that just works
- Zod — validate everything
I've used this stack to build 7 live SaaS products. All of them open source. Read the code:
→ github.com/MuhammadTanveerAbbas
If you're building an MVP right now, what's the thing slowing you down most?
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