Why it happens
The app's data and sign-in live in a Supabase project, and the project is not answering. On the free plan Supabase pauses a project after a week with no activity. A database that outgrows its disk is put into read-only mode, so reads still work and every save fails. And now and then a Supabase service is itself unhealthy.
How to tell
- The project's page in the Supabase dashboard says it is paused, or a banner says the database is in read-only mode.
- The browser console shows failed requests to the project's supabase.co address, or 5xx answers from it.
- When it is Supabase's side, status.supabase.com lists an incident in the project's region.
The fix
- Paused: open the project in the Supabase dashboard and restore it. It takes a few minutes; then sign in to the app to check.
- Read-only: free space by deleting what the app no longer needs, or move to a plan with a larger disk, and the database leaves read-only mode.
- If status.supabase.com shows an incident in your region, there is nothing to change on your side: the app comes back when Supabase does.
- For an app people rely on, a paid Supabase plan is not paused for inactivity.
Where to look
The prompt for your builder
Paste this into Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, Claude Code or whatever built the app. Replace anything in capitals. It never asks you to paste a secret into a chat; keys go into your host’s environment, by you.
When my app cannot reach Supabase — a network error or a 5xx answer from the Supabase client — show a short message saying we are having a problem and to try again in a few minutes, instead of a blank page or a spinner that never stops. Keep whatever the person typed in a form, and log the error once rather than on every retry.
How Keelnest catches it
With Supabase connected, Backend Guard reads the project's status on every five-minute check and opens an incident when two readings in a row find it paused, read-only or unhealthy. It resolves once the project answers again.
Know the moment this happens.
Keelnest watches your production app every five minutes and tells you in plain English what broke — with the fix. Free for your first app.