My First App in Firebase Studio Tips, Issues & What I Learned

General
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Hey everyone! :waving_hand:

I’ve been exploring Firebase Studio recently and wanted to share what I’ve built so far, as well as some questions that I hope others might help with.

I’m working on a small project to build a task-tracking web app using Firebase Studio. I started by prompting the AI to scaffold the UI and basic screens, then connected Firestore for saving tasks, and added simple authentication using email/password. So far it mostly works, but I’ve run into a few challenges:

:hammer_and_wrench: What Worked

  • The AI did a great job scaffolding my screens and basic navigation with a single prompt.

  • I could quickly preview the app in the built-in emulator.

  • Deployment to Firebase Hosting was smooth once the build succeeded.

:warning: Issues I’m Facing

  1. Auth persistence isn’t quite right — users log in but the session sometimes doesn’t persist or reflect correctly in the UI. Has anyone else seen this?

  2. Firestore rules/testing — I’m not sure if the preview uses my local firestore.rules or the production ones (feels like it might be pulling the cloud rules). Any tips on testing locally?

  3. Workspace stability — there have been a few random reloads and occasional workspace loading issues for me. Does a workspace reset help without losing progress?

:red_question_mark:Questions for the Community

  • What’s your best approach for integrating Firebase Auth and Firestore safely in Studio?

  • Do you use any tips for testing rules or data locally before deploying?

  • Any suggestions on making Studio more stable for long sessions?

I’m happy to share snippets/screenshots of what I’ve done so far if that helps! Looking forward to learning from your experiences. :raising_hands:

Thanks in advance! :rocket:

1 Like
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Hey Hellen :waving_hand: nice work so far, you’re already using Studio well.

Quick thoughts:

  • Auth persistence: Make sure your UI is driven by onAuthStateChanged and not just the login response. Studio previews can reload, which makes auth feel inconsistent if you’re not listening to auth state.

  • Firestore rules: Studio previews often use deployed rules, not always local ones. For accurate testing, the Firebase Emulator Suite is still the safest option before deploying.

  • Stability: Occasional reloads are normal right now. Workspace reset usually keeps files, but I recommend backing up externally for longer sessions.

If you want, I’m happy to look at your auth setup or rules and help you structure a clean, production-safe Firebase backend.

2 Likes
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ok dear thank you so much

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Hi Helen ,

you are doing are doing a great job.

about the firestore rules, this is what I do .

I ask firebase studio to perform a production ready audit and security checks before production to check if there loopholes somewhere.

After doing that thorough audit and gives me report, I take the report and the fix rules to gemini and chatgpt to examine the report and rules for breakdown and how to tighten it.

After these two have given me their feedback and tightenings expecially from Gemini, I then deploy the functions and test against the codebase. Sometimes, because some areas in the codebase were loose, after the tightening, some functions wouldn’t work and might say insufficient rules. So that’s when you let firebase do debugging to match the rules.

That’s what I mostly do. I don’t know if it would help