Common Issues general

API Calls Failing With Errors in My AI App

Your app makes calls to an API (its own backend, Supabase, or a third-party service) and those calls fail. You see errors in the console like 500, 403, 404, or CORS errors.

Error Messages You Might See

CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header 500 Internal Server Error 403 Forbidden 401 Unauthorized net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED Timeout: request took too long
CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header500 Internal Server Error403 Forbidden401 Unauthorizednet::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSEDTimeout: request took too long

Common Causes

  • CORS not configured — browser blocks requests from your domain to the API
  • API key or auth token expired, missing, or wrong
  • API endpoint URL is wrong (still pointing to localhost or old URL)
  • Rate limiting — too many requests in a short time
  • Backend server error (500) due to unhandled exceptions

How to Fix It

  1. Open browser Network tab (F12 > Network) and find the failing request — check the status code and response body
  2. For CORS errors: configure your API server to allow requests from your frontend domain
  3. For 401/403: check that your API key or auth token is being sent correctly in the request headers
  4. For 500: check server logs for the actual error — the frontend error won't have details
  5. For timeouts: check if the API endpoint is accessible from your deployment environment

Real developers can help you.

Richard McSorley Richard McSorley Full-Stack Software Engineer with 8+ years building high-performance applications for enterprise clients. Shipped production systems at Walmart (4,000+ stores), Cigna (20M+ users), and Arkansas Blue Cross. 5 patents in retail/supply chain tech. Currently focused on AI integrations, automation tools, and TypeScript-first architectures. Matthew Butler Matthew Butler Systems Development Engineer @ Amazon Web Services Pratik Pratik SWE with 15+ years of experience building and maintaining web apps and extensive BE infrastructure Jared Hasson Jared Hasson Full time lead founding dev at a cyber security saas startup, with 10 yoe and a bachelor's in CS. Building & debugging software products is what I've spent my time on for forever Yovel Cohen Yovel Cohen I got a lot of experience in building Long-horizon AI Agents in production, Backend apps that scale to millions of users and frontend knowledge as well. Jen Jacobsen Jen Jacobsen I’m a Full-Stack Developer with over 10 years of experience building modern web and mobile applications. I enjoy working across the full product lifecycle — turning ideas into real, well-built products that are intuitive for users and scalable for businesses. I particularly enjoy building mobile apps, modern web platforms, and solving complex technical problems in a way that keeps systems clean, reliable, and easy to maintain. Nam Tran Nam Tran 10 years as fullstack developer Vlad Temian Vlad Temian 15+ years shipping production infrastructure for startups. Former CTO at qed.builders (acquired by The Sandbox). Cursor ambassador and agentic tooling builder. I've scaled systems, automated deployments, and built observability tools for AI coding workflows. I specialize in taking vibe-coded apps from broken prototype to production-ready: fixing Supabase auth/RLS, Stripe integrations, deployment pipelines, and cleaning up AI-generated spaghetti. I build tools in this space (agentprobe, claudebin, micode) and understand both sides: how AI generates code and why it breaks. https://blog.vtemian.com/ Caio Rodrigues Caio Rodrigues I'm a full-stack developer focused on building practical and scalable web applications. My main experience is with **React, TypeScript, and modern frontend architectures**, where I prioritize clean code, component reusability, and maintainable project structures. I have strong experience working with **dynamic forms, state management (Redux / React Hook Form), and complex data-driven interfaces**. I enjoy solving real-world problems by turning ideas into reliable software that companies can actually use in their daily operations. Beyond coding, I care about **software quality and architecture**, following best practices for componentization, code organization, and performance optimization. I'm also comfortable working across the stack when needed, integrating APIs, handling business logic, and helping transform prototypes into production-ready systems. My goal is always to deliver solutions that are **simple, efficient, and genuinely useful for the people using them.** Luca Liberati Luca Liberati I work on monoliths and microservices, backends and frontends, manage K8s clusters and love to design apps architecture

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does a CORS error mean?

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) is a browser security feature. It means your frontend (e.g., on Vercel) is trying to call an API on a different domain, and that API hasn't been configured to allow it.

I get a 500 error but don't know what's wrong. How do I find out?

A 500 error means the server crashed. The actual error is in the server logs, not in the browser. Check your hosting platform's logs.

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