How Lovable's People team built its own HR operating system to attract, hire, and ramp top talent

TL;DR

• An org planning app unified headcount data into a single live source of truth. Connecting the HRIS and ATS directly into Lovable eliminated conflicting spreadsheets and weekly reconciliation meetings, saving an estimated 10 hours each week.
• Automated compensation modeling and offer approvals cut turnaround from days to minutes. A custom compensation app, Hart, checks equity pools, salary bands, and peer benchmarks in real time. That lets recruiters put competitive offers in front of top candidates quickly, while keeping a human in the loop for edge cases.
• An onboarding app gets 90% of new hires shipping in their first week. The app brings role-specific context, setup tasks, and team resources together, cutting two hours of administrative overhead per hire.
• Confidential AI support resolves routine policy questions and triages complex requests. An internal support engine, Poppy, connects directly to company handbooks to deliver instant, private answers in Slack, routing sensitive matters to the People team so they can focus on high-touch care.

Lovable is scaling fast in one of the most competitive talent markets in tech. With engineering, design, and GTM teams doubling almost overnight, Lovable’s People team cannot afford to hire slowly. But landing world-class talent is only half the challenge. The other half is onboarding people well, supporting them, and clearing the administrative hurdles that slow them down.

“When a company grows this fast, traditional HR systems cannot keep up. Headcount changes weekly, comp modeling gets messy, onboarding doubles overnight, and simple policy questions overwhelm your team. Instead of accepting the friction between rigid tools and our pace, we encourage our team to build what they need. It lets a lean team make faster, better-informed decisions across the entire company,” says Maryanne Caughey, Chief People Officer.

Across planning, hiring, onboarding, and employee support, Lovable’s People team builds its own software to match how fast the company runs.

Ending spreadsheet confusion with a live source of truth for headcount

Getting an accurate headcount number used to be nearly impossible. Finance tracked approved budgets in one place, recruiters managed roles in another, and department heads mapped future team structures in private documents. Finding out whether a role was approved meant checking multiple sheets, chasing managers in Slack, and sitting in weekly reconciliation meetings. Neither the HRIS nor the ATS could give leadership the full picture on its own.

To bridge the gap, the People team pulled both tools into Lovable, creating a single tailored source of truth. Now, approved headcount, current reporting lines, and active requisitions live in one shared workspace. When leadership needs to adjust plans, they can model organizational changes, test hiring timelines, and see budget impacts right away — an improvement that’s given back an estimated 10 hours each week. Teams can open approved roles immediately instead of spending weeks chasing internal alignment. Recruiters spend less time hunting down sign-offs and more time with candidates.

For Simon Tong, Lovable’s Head of Total Rewards and People Analytics, building the app with his peers in HR and recruiting gave them the visibility needed to move at the pace the business required.

“Every system we had told part of the story, and none of them told all of it,” says Simon. “Our first fix was a nicer spreadsheet, and it was out of date the moment we shared it. With Lovable, we connected everything into one view. Now leadership can adjust strategic plans as fast as the business moves, not once a quarter.”

Closing top candidates faster with automated offer approvals and real-time equity modeling

In a competitive hiring market, speed wins candidates. When an exceptional engineer or designer is evaluating competing offers, taking days to generate an offer letter risks losing them.

Offer approvals, total reward statements, and equity modeling were trapped in static compensation spreadsheets and slowed by manual sign-offs. For Simon, running Total Rewards as a one-person team meant balancing market compensation bands, equity burn analysis, and manual approvals across Slack and email without a clear audit trail. Ad hoc comp analysis took even more time Simon couldn’t afford to waste.

So Simon used Lovable to build Hart, an in-house compensation and offer engine that sits directly on top of the company’s compensation stack.

Hart brings compensation bands, equity guidelines, HRIS and ATS data, and live analytics into a single workspace. When a recruiter drafts an offer, Hart checks salary, equity, and peer benchmarks against approved guardrails in real time. If an offer fits standard guidelines, it gets routed for immediate human sign-off. If an edge case requires custom approval, Hart surfaces it directly to Simon.

“When you're trying to close top talent, 24 hours of waiting on sign-offs is an eternity,” says Simon Tong. “Hart gives recruiters the autonomy to put a competitive offer on the table quickly, while giving me total confidence that we’re crafting fair and competitive offers and that we aren't blowing through equity pools or compensation bands.”

By automating standard approvals and reserving manual review for edge cases, Hart cut hiring-offer turnaround times from days to minutes.

Giving new hires momentum on day one

An employee’s first day sets the pace for how quickly they onboard. New hires need to understand the company, meet their people, and be directed where to focus, alongside getting their practical setup sorted.

Iona Slater built Lovable’s onboarding app to bring those first steps together, from pre-start-date prep through a team member’s first 90 days.

Before day one, new hires can use the app to learn how Lovable works, read the company values, and finish basic setup. Once they start, the app gives them a role- and team-specific onboarding track with first-week tasks, team sessions, and key resources in one place, while managers and onboarding buddies get their own guidance for supporting them.

The app connects company context with practical action: where the product is heading, how teams communicate, and how people use AI. Side quests encourage new hires to meet colleagues and get involved, while a Slack bot sends timely reminders.

“We wanted people to arrive with a feel for Lovable and a clear starting point,” says Iona. “Having the practical information and company context in one place gives us more time to help people get involved and make their first contribution.”

The People team estimates about 90% of new hires ship their first contribution in week one, and the app saves roughly two hours of onboarding admin per hire, which frees up more time to support employees as they ramp.

Answering employees' HR questions instantly

As Lovable’s headcount grew, routine operational questions multiplied: parental leave, equipment stipends, visa details, health benefits, and performance reviews. The answers were all documented, but nobody wanted to dig through a handbook to find them.

Routine questions and sensitive requests were buried in busy Slack channels, email threads, and manual tickets. Public channels lacked privacy for personal topics, while direct messages pulled People team members away from deep work to answer the same questions repeatedly.

Kowsar Nouzari built Poppy, an internal support engine across Slack and web that answers policy questions confidentially and routes operational requests straight to the right team.

Poppy connects directly to Lovable's internal handbooks, guidelines, and policies. When an employee asks a routine question in Slack, Poppy messages the user directly with an immediate answer. When an inquiry requires human care, like a medical leave request or visa transfer, Poppy collects the background context and routes it privately to the right person on the People team.

“We didn’t want people browsing a handbook; we wanted them to ask a question and get an answer. And nobody should have to choose between posting a sensitive question in a public channel or waiting days for an email reply,” says Kowsar. “Poppy gives everyone an immediate, private answer whenever they need it. It removes repetitive triage from our day so we can focus on high-touch support where people really need our attention.”

Building software that lets HR focus on people and culture, not admin

At most high-growth companies, operational drag from software that “doesn’t quite fit” is treated as the unavoidable price of scaling. Lovable’s People team proves that teams can build software matched to their workflows at every stage of growth.

With custom apps for org planning, compensation modeling, onboarding, and internal support automating so much administrative work, the team reclaimed time to focus on what matters most: culture, connection, and shared experiences.

That breathing room gave the People team the capacity to plan and host a 300+ person offsite in Croatia, with help from another custom app built to handle everything from personalized itineraries and self-organizing workshops to live event timing and shared photos.

When People teams stop being buried in support tickets, they can get back to creating an environment where people love coming to work.