Checklist: what a coding-agent-ready SaaS starter must include

This checklist is about a coding-agent-ready starter—Cursor, Claude Code, and similar editors that follow Skills and an AGENTS.md. It is not about product AI features such as in-app chat, RAG, or a customer-facing copilot.

“AI friendly” on a landing page is not the same as agent-ready. Agent-ready means a coding agent can install playbooks, follow schema contracts, wire auth and payments, and verify the result without inventing your architecture from scratch.

Use this checklist when evaluating any SaaS starter—including TinyShip. Tick the boxes that matter for your product; ignore marketing adjectives.

Auth

An agent should not invent your session model.

• Email/password sign-in and sign-up exist as first-class flows
• At least one global OAuth path (Google and/or GitHub) is documented with env vars
• Session and role model are shared libraries, not copy-pasted per framework app
• Optional regional providers (for example WeChat / SMS) are adapters—not the only path on an English launch
• There is a Skill or scripted guide to turn providers on/off without rewriting core auth

TinyShip map: email/password, Google, and GitHub on the English path; WeChat/SMS optional for China. Better Auth–based stack; tinyship-auth Skill. Details: Authentication in the user guide.

Payments / credits

Billing is where agents hallucinate the most. Demand explicit contracts.

• Subscription and/or one-time checkout through named processors
• Provider abstraction (one payment API, swappable backends)
• Credit ledger if you sell AI usage or consumables (recharge, consume, admin view)
• Webhooks / fulfillment hooks documented so agents do not invent order state
• Test/fake order path for Recipes that must not hit live processors

TinyShip map (EN): Stripe, PayPal, Creem, Dodo Payments. Credits system for recharge and AI billing. China WeChat Pay / Alipay optional—if that is your primary market, use tinyship.cn. Skills: tinyship-payment, plus payment sections in the user guide.

AI pages

If you sell AI features, the starter should already expose the surfaces an agent will brand—not empty folders.

• Chat and/or image and/or video routes exist with provider key configuration
• Credit costs can be configured per model or action
• Failed jobs can return credits where the product promises it (for example video tasks)
• A Skill configures provider keys instead of pasting secrets into random files

TinyShip map: /ai, /image-generate, /video-generate in the application pages overview; tinyship-ai Skill; Recipes that promote one AI surface and hide the others.

Schema contracts

Agents break migrations when contracts are implicit.

• Shared database package / schema module the agent is told to edit
• Named migrations and seed expectations for complex product shapes
• Validators (for example Zod) living next to the schema the UI uses
• Acceptance checks the agent can run after a Recipe or feature Skill

TinyShip map: libs/database and libs/validators in the monorepo; Recipes lock migration names, credit rules, and acceptance scripts (see Recipes).

Recipe vs N templates

Ask how the vendor scales product types × frameworks.

Prefer Recipes (or equivalent playbooks) when you ship more than one product shape and more than one UI framework.

TinyShip map: Recipes include ai-image, ai-video, ai-chat, membership-content, waitlist, directory, and digital-product. Install with npx skills add TinyshipCN/tinyship-skills, then ask the agent to apply a Recipe. Framework and database stay your choice via tinyship-setup.

Pre-ship checks

Before you call the agent “done,” verify in the running app (every locale you ship):

1. Homepage describes your product, not the starter pitch
2. Primary CTA goes to the right page (generator, submit, pricing, sign-up, …)
3. Hidden demo links are gone from header/footer (including mobile)
4. Sign-in / sign-up titles use your product name
5. Complex Recipes: required routes return 200; migrations and seeds match the playbook
6. Auth and payment providers pointed at test credentials until you intentionally go live
7. Logo/brand text updated (tinyship-brand) so “TinyShip” is not left as the product name

These mirror the verify steps in TinyShip’s Recipes docs; adapt them to any starter you evaluate.

How TinyShip maps

TinyShip is still source code for developers and agents—not a no-code builder. You review diffs; Skills do not replace product judgment.

CTA

• Install Skills — npx skills add TinyshipCN/tinyship-skills, then ask your agent to set up TinyShip or apply a Recipe
• Docs — docs.gettinyship.dev/en/user-guide (auth, payment, credits, AI, Recipes, deployment)
• Buy — TinyShip Complete $49 / lifetime (Complete + TinyShip CF, future templates, lifetime updates, private GitHub, commercial rights); Dodo Payments checkout: gettinyship.dev/pricing
• Contact — [email protected]