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97% of AI-Shipped Web Apps Launch with Broken Basics

Siteglass auto-scanned 594 freshly-shipped, mostly AI-built web apps—all logged-out, in a real browser. 578 of them (over 97%) registered at least one finding. AI can spin up a frontend in seconds, but it seems to forget the fundamentals just as fast.

SEO: The Low-Hanging, Massively Missed Fruit

Missing meta descriptions topped the list: 573 apps (96%) skipped them entirely. Close behind, 548 apps (92%) lacked a viewport meta tag, making them unfriendly on mobile. That’s table-stakes HTML that every template generator gets right, but AI builds routinely drop.

Accessibility: Contrast, Text, and the Silent Headaches

Color contrast failures hit 381 apps (64%)—enough to give a WCAG auditor heartburn. Beyond that, 104 apps had links with no discernible text, and 58 had buttons with no discernible text. Another 43 links weren’t distinguishable without relying on color, 33 disabled zooming and scaling, and 32 missed keyboard access on scrollable regions. In total, accessibility issues accounted for 826 findings, second only to SEO.

Forms Nobody Bothered to Test

204 forms (combined GET and POST) were flagged as worth a flow test—meaning they existed but likely hadn’t been exercised. 146 were simple GET forms, 58 were POST, and a handful had multiple fields. AI throws them in, but nobody checks if the submit actually works.

404s, 401s, 403s: Resources Already Rotten

Broken resources showed up routinely: 51 were returning 404, 26 threw 401, and 24 blocked with 403. That’s 101 live links or assets dead on arrival, freshly shipped.

Console Errors: JavaScript’s Quiet Complaints

30 apps had a single console error, 19 had five, 18 had three—and most went unnoticed by human eyes before the scan. Multiply by the number of users and those silent exceptions become user-facing chaos.

All of these issues were caught automatically, logged-out, in minutes. Siteglass doesn’t need credentials or a human—just a URL. If your AI-built app is about to ship, maybe run a scan first. It’ll save you from shipping 97% broken.