Lovable.dev is not my thing
Urania Logico - tech ENI really wanted to like Lovable.dev, I swear.đŤ
The promise was compelling: fast product builds, AI-assisted creation, streamlined workflows, less technical overhead. For solo founders and small teams, that sounds like a dream.
But after actually using it and particularly alongside Shopify (not premium) my experience was frustrating enough that I wouldnât recommend it.
The Problem With âVibe Codingâ
Lovable leans into what people now call âvibe codingâ, prompting your way into a product. You describe a feature, tweak the tone, adjust the layout, regenerate sections, and slowly shape something that looks right.
The problem is that âlooking rightâ is not the same as being structurally sound.
Vibe coding optimizes for momentum and aesthetics, not architecture. It feels productive because things appear quickly. Pages render. Components exist. Flows look coherent. But under the surface, the logic often lacks intentional structure. Naming conventions drift. Patterns arenât always consistent. Generated solutions solve the immediate prompt but donât necessarily respect long-term scalability.
When you try to evolve the project, introduce more complex state handling, or integrate third-party systems, you start fighting the very scaffolding that initially felt empowering.
Another issue is ownership clarity. When code is heavily AI-generated, debugging becomes interpretive. You didnât fully design the system; you negotiated it into existence. That makes reasoning about edge cases harder. Instead of understanding why something works, youâre probing it to see how fragile it is.
For landing pages or prototypes, this might be acceptable. But once the project moves from experimentation to infrastructure, the lack of deliberate architecture becomes a liability.
The Interaction Feels ⌠Boring
Rather than being creative and empowering, working with Lovableâs prompts became repetitive and dull.
You repeat variations of the same instructions: âmove this,â âadd that,â âuse this color here,â âadjust spacing there.â What was advertised as a fluid creative process quickly felt like form-filling: prompt, wait, tweak, repeat. It wasnât brainstorming with a tool, it was negotiating with a spinner.
Editing constraints felt rigid, not expressive. Small tweaks often obliterated previous work. And you use your credits. Aprox 0,25 per prompt.
Instead of feeling like I was building a product, I felt like I was editing someone elseâs rough draft.
The Shopify Friction
Combined with Shopify, it becomes problematic.
Shopify isnât just a storefront tool, when you add Lovable as an abstraction layer on top of Shopify, you introduce distance between your business logic and the system that actually runs your business.
That distance shows up in subtle but serious ways. Product syncing becomes something you have to trust rather than verify. Variant behavior can feel opaque. Metafields and custom logic stop being straightforward extensions and start feeling like negotiation points between systems. When something doesnât behave correctly, youâre no longer debugging one platform, youâre debugging the relationship between two.
With Lovable layered in, accountability becomes diffused. If checkout behavior is inconsistent, is it Shopifyâs configuration? Is it a sync issue? Is it generated logic from Lovable that doesnât fully align with Shopifyâs model?
Abstraction can be powerful when it simplifies complexity.
Conclusion
Lovable isnât a bad idea. Itâs fun for short bursts. It gets you something fast.
The interaction model is dull and repetitive rather than empowering. The pricing structure pushes you to pay for the least painful experience, which is the very experience that should be baseline. And on real commerce stacks like Shopify, the abstraction creates confusion rather than clarity.
If youâre building serious products that need durability and predictability, Lovable isnât the tool Iâd bet on.
For prototypes? Maybe.
M2C