Moving a Lovable project into Replit Agent is a normal migration, and the import step itself is safe. The risk is what comes with it. You inherit the original project's security posture, including any hardcoded keys or open database tables, and neither tool fixes the other's flaws on the way across. Here is what actually transfers and how to migrate without carrying problems into production.
Short answer
Importing a Lovable project into Replit Agent is safe as an action, but you inherit the source project's security posture, including any hardcoded keys or Supabase tables with Row Level Security disabled. Replit Secrets encrypt the values you move into them, yet they do not fix keys already hardcoded in the imported source, which stay visible if the Repl is public, where scrapers actively harvest them. Migrate safely by setting the Repl private, rotating and moving every key into Secrets, and re-verifying RLS, because neither tool cleans up the other's flaws automatically.
What you should know
- The import is safe; the contents may not be: you carry over the code and its flaws.
- Hardcoded keys transfer: a key left in Lovable's source is still in the source after import.
- Replit Secrets protect values you move there: they are encrypted, but they do not fix hardcoded keys.
- Public Repls expose source: a public Repl shows all code, so a hardcoded key is visible to anyone.
- RLS does not change on import: a Supabase table left open in Lovable is still open in Replit.
What actually transfers when you import?
The code, and every security choice baked into it. If the Lovable project hardcoded an API key in the frontend or left a Supabase table reachable by the public anon key, that comes across unchanged, because the import moves files, not good defaults. Replit Agent then continues building on top of that code, which can propagate the original patterns into new features. This matters because Lovable projects have shipped these exact issues: in a 2026 Lovable incident, keys sat in client JavaScript and tables with Row Level Security disabled were queryable with the public anon key. Importing such a project does not resolve any of that; it relocates it. The mental model that helps is that the import is a copy, not a review: Replit Agent receives the files and trusts them as a starting point, the same way it would trust code you wrote, so it has no reason to question a key or a missing policy the previous tool left in place.
Does Replit make the imported project secure?
Only for the secrets you actively move into its Secrets tool. Replit stores secrets as encrypted environment variables that are hidden from the editor, kept out of version history, and not exposed in forks. That is a genuinely safe place for a key, but it only protects values you put there. A key still hardcoded in the imported source is not a secret to Replit; it is just code, and a public Repl shows all of that code to anyone. The table sorts what is protected from what is exposed.
| What | In Replit | Note |
|---|---|---|
| A key stored in the Secrets tool | Encrypted, hidden, absent from forks and history | The safe place for keys |
| A key hardcoded in source | Visible to anyone if the Repl is public | Carried over from Lovable; rotate it |
| Repl visibility | Public exposes all source; private hides it | Set private for a real app |
| Supabase Row Level Security | Unchanged by the import | Re-verify it is enabled on every table |
Scrapers specifically target public Repls for hardcoded keys, so a public Repl that carried over a Lovable key is a live exposure, not a theoretical one. The timing matters too: the exposure begins the moment the public Repl exists, not when you finish building, which is why visibility is the first setting to change rather than the last.
How do you migrate safely, step by step?
Treat the import as the start of a cleanup, not the end. The order that works:
- Set the Repl to private before anything else, so the imported source is not publicly visible while you work.
- Find hardcoded keys in the imported code, since Lovable projects commonly carry them in the frontend.
- Rotate every key that was ever hardcoded, because once it has lived in a repo or a client bundle you cannot assume it is private.
- Move the new keys into Replit Secrets and reference them as environment variables instead of literals.
- Re-verify Supabase Row Level Security on every table, and confirm an unauthenticated request is refused, rather than assuming the migration preserved it. For a related builder comparison, see Rork vs Lovable.
What to watch out for
The first trap is assuming the migration cleaned anything; it moves code as-is, so an issue in Lovable is an issue in Replit until you fix it. The second is leaving the Repl public during the move, which exposes the imported source, including any hardcoded key, to the scrapers that watch Replit. The third is trusting Replit Secrets to cover a key that is still written in the source; Secrets only protect values you migrate into them. For the shipped result, a pre-submission scan such as PTKD.com (https://ptkd.com) reads the compiled APK, AAB, or IPA against OWASP MASVS for hardcoded secrets that survived the move, which is the layer where a leftover key reaches an attacker. The honest limit is that a scan finds a secret that shipped; it cannot rotate the key for you or write your access rules, so pair it with the rotation and RLS checks above.
What to take away
- Importing a Lovable project into Replit Agent is safe as a step, but you inherit its hardcoded keys and any RLS gaps.
- Replit Secrets protect the values you move into them; they do not fix keys still hardcoded in the imported source.
- Set the Repl private, rotate every key that was hardcoded, move keys into Secrets, and re-verify Supabase RLS.
- Confirm the shipped build with a pre-submission scan such as PTKD.com, since the migration relocates flaws rather than resolving them.
