How to move your Lovable, Bolt, or v0 project into Shipd

Most AI app builders are greenfield tools. You describe an app, they spin up a brand-new project in their sandbox, and everything you do lives inside that project. That's great until the day you have a real app with real code — and you want to keep going somewhere else. At that point "start a new chat" isn't a migration path.

Shipd's import flow is the other direction: it takes the project you already have and loads it into the editor so you can continue building it. Here's how it works, and where the edges are.

Two ways in: your repo, or a file

Whatever tool you came from, your real source lives in one of two places Shipd can read: a GitHub repo or a downloaded ZIP. That's not a limitation of Shipd — it's just where the code is. A Lovable or v0 share link is a login-gated page or a compiled preview; neither hands over your source. So import gives you the two routes that actually contain it:

• Connect GitHub and pick your app. Lovable syncs every project to a GitHub repo; Bolt and v0 can push to one too. Connect once, and your repos show up as a searchable list — click yours. No URLs to copy.
• Drop a ZIP. Export your project from your tool and drag the file in. No Git required.

Pick your tool in the import wizard and it walks you through the shortest path for that specific one.

What actually happens on import

This is the part that separates "import" from "we opened your files in a sandbox":

1. Your source becomes version 1. Shipd reads the repo or ZIP and seeds your real code as the first version of the project — so your app loads and runs in the preview immediately, editable, not as an empty scaffold you have to regenerate.
2. Your media comes with it. Images, SVGs, and fonts are brought in and rendered, so the app looks like your app — not a broken-image skeleton. (Dependencies you don't need — node_modules, build output — are left behind.)
3. It reads the code before it writes any. An agentic explorer walks your project and builds an Architecture Brief — framework, components, conventions — so the next thing you generate fits your real code instead of bolting on scaffold primitives.
4. You keep building — as a pull request. New work is generated against your actual repo and shipped as a clean PR you review and merge. Nothing is locked in; your source is always yours.

What comes across — and what doesn't

Being precise here matters more than overselling it:

• Comes across: your code, your styles, your images and fonts, your file structure.
• Doesn't come across: secrets. If your app talks to Supabase or an API, the UI imports and renders, but live data needs your environment variables — which we never copy (they're secrets, and they're not in the export). Shipd flags which ones the app expects and points you to where to add them.

That's the honest shape of it: the design and code are faithful; the backend reconnects when you supply its keys.

The limits, stated plainly

• ZIP size. Uploads currently cap at 50 MB. That's roomy for real source (which is small once node_modules is excluded), but a media-heavy export can exceed it — in which case the GitHub route has no size limit.
• Preview boot. Standard Vite + React projects (most of what Lovable and Bolt produce) load and run. A more exotic stack might import fully and stay editable, but not boot the live preview until it's adjusted — you'll get a clear message rather than a silent failure.

Why this exists

Greenfield builders are good at the first ten minutes of a project. The problem starts at minute eleven — when you have something real and the tool has no way to keep working on that, only to make you a new one. Import is the exit door: bring the app you already built, and pick up where you left off.

Outgrew Lovable, Bolt, or v0? Bring your repo →