Authentication Best Practices for Cursor, Windsurf, and Other AI-Coded Projects

Keywords: auth best practices, Cursor login, Windsurf authentication, AI app security

AI-coded doesn’t mean half-baked security

Cursor, Windsurf, and other AI dev tools are letting teams ship MVPs faster than ever — but authentication is still where a lot of these apps fall apart.

Hardcoded login forms. No password policies. Auth logic scattered across frontend and backend files. Sound familiar?

If you’ve vibe-coded your way to a working app, this post gives you the simple, practical rules to build login flows that won’t break when you scale.

What Most AI-Built Apps Get Wrong

1. Auth is hardcoded in the frontend
   No central control. No staging. No rollback. No separation of logic from UI.

2. No password policy or session limits
   Without basics like expiration, reset flows, or brute force protection, you're shipping vulnerabilities.

3. No ability to stage or test new login flows
   Everything is live, or it’s nowhere.

What You Should Be Doing Instead

Start with a DSL (domain-specific language) that lives alongside your codebase. That’s how Prefactor works — define flows like this:

Then deploy using the CLI — and integrate it into your frontend via SDK or API.

Benefits of Defining Auth in Code

• ✅ Version control (via Git)

• ✅ Easy to stage/test login flows before they go live

• ✅ Secure by default — no surprises

• ✅ Works with Cursor, Windsurf, and any modern AI dev workflow

• ✅ No more clicking through a UI to manage critical logic

Best Practices Checklist

• Use multi-step flows with validation

• Apply basic password policies

• Separate your login flow from your UI layer

• Keep session and error handling out of the frontend

• Version and test flows before they hit production

TL;DR

💡 Vibe-coded apps need serious auth
💡 Define login flows in code — not config
💡 Test and deploy like any other part of your stack

Build It Right from the Start

Prefactor gives you secure, code-defined authentication you can version, stage, and deploy — without leaving your AI-powered workflow.

👉 Start building with Prefactor now