Production Monitoring Checklist for Solo Founders: 10 Things You Need Before Launch

Why monitoring before launch (not after)

Most founders add monitoring after something breaks. By then, you've already lost users who hit the bug silently. Monitoring is infrastructure — it needs to be in place before users arrive.

The 10-item checklist

1. Error monitoring installed — captures JS exceptions with stack traces
2. Unhandled promise rejections tracked — these are the silent killers
3. API error rates visible — know when your backend is returning 5xx
4. Core Web Vitals being measured — LCP, CLS, INP for real users
5. New error type alert — get notified when a new class of error appears
6. Error rate spike alert — get notified when error rate doubles
7. CSP violations monitored — catch script injection attempts
8. User session context captured — know what user was doing when it crashed
9. Performance budget set — alert when LCP exceeds 2.5s
10. Monitoring on all environments — staging and prod, not just prod

The 2-minute setup

ProdFix covers all 10 items with a single npm install. Add the script, set your API key, and you're monitoring within minutes.

What monitoring tells you that users don't

Most users don't report bugs — they just leave. Monitoring is the difference between knowing you have a bug and finding out via churn data 30 days later.