You Built an App With AI. Here's How to Launch It
You vibe-coded an app with Lovable, Bolt, Cursor or Replit. Now launch it: the exact visual assets every store, landing page and Product Hunt post needs.
By Screenhance Team
You built the app. You typed prompts into Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, Replit, v0, or Claude, and a few days later you had a real, working product. The part nobody warned you about is what comes next. You need an App Store listing, a landing page, a Product Hunt post, and a stack of social images, and not one of those AI tools made any of them for you.
The number of people shipping software without an engineering or design background has gone vertical, because the tools to build are now conversational. But vibe coding gets you a working app, not a launched one. A launch is a marketing problem, and marketing runs on visuals you have to produce yourself.
This is the guide to that second half. Each step below maps to the exact visual asset it needs and the fastest way to make it without opening Figma or hiring a designer.
> Skip the manual work: the Launch Kit generates your whole launch asset set (store screenshots, landing-page hero, OG image, and Product Hunt gallery) from one short brief. Built for exactly this moment.
The launch surfaces an AI-built app actually needs
Before the checklist, here is the map. A modern app launch lives on four surfaces, and each one rejects you (literally, in the case of app stores) if the visuals are wrong.
| Surface | What it needs | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| App Store / Play Store | 5 to 8 framed screenshots at exact pixel sizes | The first 2 screenshots drive most of the install decision |
| Website / landing page | A hero image and an OG (social preview) image | The OG image is what people see when your link gets shared |
| Product Hunt | A gallery of 3 to 6 images plus a thumbnail | The gallery is the first thing hunters scroll through |
| Social (X, LinkedIn, Reddit) | Launch-day cards sized per platform | A bare text post gets scrolled past; an image stops the thumb |
Notice what these have in common. They are all images, and they all show your app. You already have the raw material, which is your app screens. The work is turning raw screenshots into framed, captioned, correctly-sized marketing visuals. That is the entire job.
The step-by-step launch checklist
Here is the order that works for a solo founder or non-designer. Do them roughly in sequence, because each asset feeds the next.
Step 1: Capture clean screens of your app
Open your app and grab the 4 to 6 screens that tell the story: the main screen, the one feature that makes people go "oh nice," the result or payoff screen, and onboarding. Use real-looking content, not "Test User 1" and "asdf." Placeholder data is the number-one tell of an unfinished app.
If it is a web app, screenshot the browser. If it is mobile, use your phone or the simulator. Save them as PNGs. This is your source material for almost everything that follows.
Step 2: Build your store screenshots
If you are shipping to the App Store or Google Play, this is your highest-leverage asset. Plain screenshots look like bug reports. What converts is a screenshot inside a current device frame, on a calm gradient background, with a short outcome-led headline above it ("Plan your week in 30 seconds," not "Welcome").
The catch is the dimensions. Apple and Google reject submissions that are even slightly off the required pixel sizes, so you do not want to be fighting export math at 11pm on launch eve. Use the App Store screenshot generator for iOS and the Play Store screenshot generator for Android. Drop in your screens, pick a frame and background, add 3-to-5-word headlines, and export every required size from one design.
Aim for 5 to 8 screenshots. Spend the most effort on the first two, because they appear in search results and do most of the convincing before anyone taps through.
Step 3: Make a landing page and its OG image
Even if your app lives in a store, you need a web page to point people to. The two visuals it needs:
- A hero image: a framed shot of your app at the top of the page, so visitors see the product in the first second instead of reading their way to it.
- An OG image: the preview card that shows up whenever someone shares your link on X, LinkedIn, Slack, or iMessage.
That second one is the most-skipped asset in indie launches, and skipping it is expensive. When you share a link with no OG image set, platforms show a blank gray box or a random favicon, so your big launch tweet looks broken before anyone reads a word. A proper OG image at 1200 x 630 with your app name, a one-line value prop, and a product shot turns every shared link into an ad. Make it once and it works on every platform that reads Open Graph tags.
Step 4: Prepare your Product Hunt launch
Product Hunt is still one of the best free distribution channels for a new app, and it is unusually friendly to AI-built and indie products. It is also visual-first. The gallery is the first thing people scroll, and a strong first gallery image is what stops them.
You need a thumbnail (the small square next to your listing) and a gallery of 3 to 6 images: one that states what the app does, two or three feature shots, and ideally one that shows a result. Build the set with the Product Hunt gallery generator so the sizing and style stay consistent across the whole gallery. Consistent visuals read as "this person ships real products," which matters a lot on launch day.
Pick a launch day (Tuesday through Thursday tend to be most active), line up a few people to comment early, and have your gallery ready the night before. Product Hunt's own launch resources walk through the mechanics.
Step 5: Stage your launch-day social posts
On launch morning you will post to X, LinkedIn, maybe a relevant subreddit or Indie Hackers. Each of those should carry an image, because a post with a visual gets meaningfully more attention than a wall of text. Reuse your store screenshots or hero shot, recropped to each platform's card size. You are not making new art, you are repackaging the assets you already built in steps 2 through 4.
Write the copy the day before so launch morning is just hitting publish. Lead with what the app does and the fact that you built it with AI, because that origin story is itself interesting to a lot of people right now.
The fast path: generate the whole set at once
Read that checklist back and you will notice the same screens get framed, resized, and recaptioned over and over for five different surfaces. Doing that by hand, one tool and one canvas at a time, is the slow path. It is also where most solo launches stall, because the asset grind feels endless and none of it is the work you got into building for.
The fast path is to treat the whole launch as one job. Describe your app once, give it your screens, and generate the entire set in a single pass: store screenshots in every required size, a landing-page hero, an OG image, and a Product Hunt gallery, all in a consistent style. That is what Launch Kit does. You fill in a short brief, it produces the coordinated asset set, and you tweak from there instead of starting from a blank canvas five times.
If you would rather jump straight in, open the app at app.screenhance.com/launch and start from your app name and a screenshot. The point is the same either way. The launch visuals should take an afternoon, not a second week of work after you already finished building.
You did the hard, technical part. Do not let resizing images be the thing that keeps your app from getting seen.
Frequently Asked Questions
I built an app with AI. What do I actually need to launch it?
You need launch visuals for four surfaces: store screenshots (if you have a mobile app), a landing page with a hero and an OG image, a Product Hunt gallery, and social cards for launch day. The code is done; the launch is a marketing-asset job, and all of those assets are images of your app.
How do I launch an app I built with Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, or Replit?
The launch process is the same regardless of which AI tool built the app, because none of them produce marketing assets. Capture clean screens, frame them into store screenshots, build a landing page with an OG image, prepare a Product Hunt gallery, and stage launch-day social posts. The Launch Kit produces that whole set from one brief.
Do I need App Store screenshots if my app is web-based?
No. Store screenshots are only for apps shipping to the Apple App Store or Google Play. A web app still needs a landing-page hero and an OG image so shared links look polished, plus a Product Hunt gallery if you launch there.
What is an OG image and why does it matter for my launch?
An OG (Open Graph) image is the preview card that appears when your link is shared on X, LinkedIn, Slack, or iMessage. Without one, shared links show a blank box, so your launch posts look broken. A 1200 x 630 image with your app name and a product shot fixes that everywhere at once.
How long does it take to make all the launch visuals?
By hand, framing and resizing screens for every surface can eat days. Using a tool that generates the full coordinated set from one brief, like Launch Kit, gets you from screenshots to a complete launch asset set in roughly an afternoon.
Is Product Hunt worth it for an app built with AI?
Yes. Product Hunt is one of the best free distribution channels for new and indie products, and AI-built apps tend to do well there. The launch is visual-first, so prepare a strong Product Hunt gallery and a clear first image before your launch day.