What I Learned Building an AI Background Remover on Cloudflare

Short summary

A developer shares architecture lessons from building CutoutKit, an AI background-removal SaaS on Cloudflare Pages. Key patterns include proxying paid API calls through a server endpoint to protect secrets, reserving usage credits atomically before calling external APIs to prevent double-charges, and clearly communicating privacy boundaries when user data passes through third-party processors. The patterns generalize to any metered API product.

• •Proxy paid API calls server-side to protect secret keys and enforce auth, rate limits, and file validation
• •Reserve usage credits atomically before calling external APIs; release on failure to avoid double-charges
• •Clarify privacy boundaries: 'not stored' doesn't mean data never leaves the server — third-party processors still receive it

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