We've audited over 100 codebases built by other agencies.
Not to shame them. Not to steal clients. But because founders need to know what they're actually paying for.
Here's what we find:
→ No automated tests (82% of audits) → Outdated dependencies with known vulnerabilities (71%) → No documentation — not even a README (65%) → Hardcoded environment values — API keys, database credentials, all in the code (58%) → No error monitoring — they have no idea when things break (54%)
These aren't rare edge cases. This is the industry standard.
And here's the thing: most of these agencies aren't bad people. They're just moving fast, cutting corners to hit deadlines, and hoping it doesn't come back to bite them.
But it does.
A client came to us after their previous agency ghosted them.
The app worked fine for six months. Then it started crashing randomly. Support tickets piled up. The agency stopped responding.
We ran an audit. Here's what we found:
→ The database had no backups configured → Error logs were disabled in production to "improve performance" → The payment system had a race condition that occasionally charged customers twice → The codebase had zero comments — not a single line of documentation
The agency wasn't malicious. They were just in over their heads and didn't tell anyone.
An audit isn't a blame report. It's a roadmap.
We don't tell clients, "Your previous developer was incompetent." We tell them:
→ What's working well (there's always something) → What's at risk (security, performance, scalability) → What needs to be fixed now vs. what can wait → What it'll cost to get to production-ready
Most of the time, the codebase is salvageable. We fix the critical issues, document what's there, add tests, and hand it back.
Sometimes, though, a rebuild is cheaper than the fixes.
When we see:
→ Core architecture decisions that can't scale → Technical debt that would take longer to fix than to rewrite → Security issues so deep they'd require a full refactor
We're honest about it. A $30K rebuild is better than a $60K bandaid.
The best audits? The ones where we find nothing wrong.
Those are rare. But when we do, we tell the client: "Your team did great work. Keep them."
When was the last time you had an outside expert review your codebase?
#CodeAudit #TechnicalDebt #SoftwareDevelopment #QualityAssurance #AgencyWork
→ scopeforged.com
Philip Rehberger Founder, ScopeForged scopeforged.com
