Feature Preview Security Baseline: Checklist for Citizen-built Micro Apps Before Opening to QA

Hook: Stop shipping insecure micro apps to QA — fast

Citizen developers and product builders are shipping micro apps faster than ever using AI assistants and low-code platforms. That speed is powerful — but it also creates a predictable problem: small apps reaching QA/staging with simple but critical security gaps. These gaps cause failed QA cycles, costly rollbacks, and compliance headaches.

This checklist is a compact, pragmatic security baseline for micro apps created by non-devs ("citizen-built") to validate before they open a ticket to QA or push into a shared staging environment.

Why this matters in 2026

By 2026, AI-assisted app creation and no-code platforms have made micro apps ubiquitous across product teams, marketing, and ops. Late-2025 and early-2026 trends amplified three realities:

• Micro apps are everywhere — often integrated into production systems, third-party APIs, or internal directories.
• Security and compliance expectations (SLA, GDPR/CCPA, industry-specific rules) require consistent controls even for short-lived apps.
• Organizations are adopting policy-as-code (OPA, Gatekeeper), ephemeral preprod environments, and automated QA gates — but those controls only work if teams run a baseline checklist first.

How to use this checklist

Run this checklist as a lightweight pre-QA gate. It’s designed for product owners, analysts, designers, and citizen developers who need clear, executable checks and one-line fixes they can hand back to engineering if needed.

1. Run the checklist locally or against your feature branch.
2. Mark any failed item and add remediation notes to your PR.
3. Only open a QA/staging request after all