Vercel CLI Skill

The Vercel CLI (

vercel

or

vc

) deploys, manages, and develops projects on the Vercel platform from the command line. Use

vercel -h

for full flag details on any command.

Critical: Project Linking

Commands must be run from the directory containing the

.vercel

folder (or a subdirectory of it). How

.vercel

gets set up depends on your project structure:

.vercel/project.json

Created by

vercel link

. Links a single project. Fine for single-project repos, and can work in monorepos if there's only one project.

.vercel/repo.json

Created by vercel link --repo . Links a repo that may contain multiple projects. Always a good idea when any project has a non-root directory (e.g., apps/web ). Running from a project subdirectory (e.g., apps/web/ ) skips the "which project?" prompt since it's unambiguous. When something goes wrong, check how things are linked first — look at what's in .vercel/ and whether it's project.json or repo.json . Also verify you're on the right team with vercel whoami — linking while on the wrong team is a common mistake. Quick Start npm i -g vercel vercel login vercel link

single project

OR

vercel link --repo

monorepo

vercel pull vercel dev

local development

vercel deploy

preview deployment

vercel --prod

production deployment

Decision Tree

Use this to route to the correct reference file:

Deploy

→

references/deployment.md

Local development

→

references/local-development.md

Environment variables

→

references/environment-variables.md

CI/CD automation

→

references/ci-automation.md

Domains or DNS

→

references/domains-and-dns.md

Projects or teams

→

references/projects-and-teams.md

Logs, debugging, or accessing preview deploys

→

references/monitoring-and-debugging.md

Blob storage

→

references/storage.md

Integrations (databases, storage, etc.)

→

references/integrations.md

Access a preview deployment

→ use

vercel curl

(see

references/monitoring-and-debugging.md

)

CLI doesn't have a command for it

→ use

vercel api

as a fallback (see

references/advanced.md

)

Node.js backends (Express, Hono, etc.)

→

references/node-backends.md

Monorepos (Turborepo, Nx, workspaces)

→

references/monorepos.md

Bun runtime

→

references/bun.md

Feature flags

→

references/flags.md

Advanced (API, webhooks)

→

references/advanced.md

Global flags

→

references/global-options.md

First-time setup

→

references/getting-started.md

Anti-Patterns

Wrong link type in monorepos with multiple projects

:

vercel link

creates

project.json

, which only tracks one project. Use

vercel link --repo

instead. When things break, check

.vercel/

first.

Letting commands auto-link in monorepos

Many commands implicitly run

vercel link

if

.vercel/

doesn't exist. This creates

project.json

, which may be wrong. Run

vercel link

(or

--repo

) explicitly first.

Linking while on the wrong team

Use

vercel whoami

to check,

vercel teams switch

to change.

Forgetting

--yes

in CI

Required to skip interactive prompts.

Using

vercel deploy

after

vercel build

without

--prebuilt

The build output is ignored.

Hardcoding tokens in flags

Use

VERCEL_TOKEN

env var instead of

--token

.

Disabling deployment protection

Use vercel curl instead to access preview deploys.