Skill: Vercel Deploy

When to activate (automatically, without prompting)

any mention of Vercel, landing page, or site on vercel.app
task "update site", "deploy", "fix landing"
editing an HTML file in a project folder with .vercel/project.json

Auth flow (before anything else)

vercel whoami 2>&1

Authorized → proceed.

Not authorized → one-time setup:

→ In Claude Code (has a browser):

vercel login

→ In OpenClaw or any headless agent:

Tell the user:

"Open vercel.com/account/tokens → Create Token → copy it and send it here. You only need to do this once."
Once received, verify:

export VERCEL_TOKEN=<token>
vercel whoami

Store securely — do NOT write the token to ~/.zshrc or any file. Keep it in env for this session only, or ask the user to add it to their secrets manager.

Creating or editing HTML files

CRITICAL: Never output HTML in the response text.

Always write directly to a file using the Write/Edit tool:

✅ Write tool → index.html → deploy
❌ Print HTML in response → copy-paste → deploy

Reason: large HTML files exceed the 32k output token limit and Claude hangs mid-generation. Writing to a file has no such limit.

If the file is very large (>300 lines), build it in logical sections using Edit tool rather than rewriting from scratch.

Pre-deploy checklist (required)

1. Make ALL changes first

❌ ANTI-PATTERN: deploy after each individual edit ✅ Rule: all edits in file first → one deploy

2. Check for `.vercel/project.json`

ls .vercel/project.json

File exists → proceed to deploy.

File does not exist → first deploy, Vercel will create the project automatically:

vercel deploy --yes --prod
# Vercel creates the project and .vercel/project.json on first run

3. Verify changes are actually in the file

grep -c "expected string" index.html

Deploy recipe

# Deploy (run from project folder)
vercel deploy --yes --prod 2>&1 | grep -E "https://|Error"

# If custom alias was not assigned automatically — set it manually:
# For personal accounts (no --scope needed):
vercel alias set <deploy-url> <alias>.vercel.app

# For team accounts only:
vercel alias set <deploy-url> <alias>.vercel.app --scope YOUR_TEAM_SCOPE

Note: script -q /dev/null suppresses interactive prompts on macOS but breaks on Linux. Use plain vercel deploy instead — --yes flag handles prompts cross-platform.

Post-deploy verification (required)

curl -s https://<alias>.vercel.app | grep "expected string"
# 200 + expected string = ✅ done

Removing SSO (if site is locked behind auth)

PROJECT_ID=$(python3 -c "import json; print(json.load(open('.vercel/project.json'))['projectId'])")
TOKEN=$(python3 -c "import json; print(json.load(open('$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.vercel.cli/auth.json'))['token'])")

# For personal accounts:
curl -s -X PATCH "https://api.vercel.com/v9/projects/$PROJECT_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ssoProtection":null,"passwordProtection":null,"trustedIps":null}'

# For team accounts — add teamId:
curl -s -X PATCH "https://api.vercel.com/v9/projects/$PROJECT_ID?teamId=YOUR_TEAM_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ssoProtection":null,"passwordProtection":null,"trustedIps":null}'

Final output (always)

After a successful deploy, the last message to the user must be the public URL — nothing else:

✅ https://<alias>.vercel.app

❌ Anti-patterns (from practice)

| What went wrong | How to do it right | |---|---| | Generated HTML in response text (hit 32k token limit) | Always write HTML directly to file using Write/Edit tool | | Deployed from home directory (wrong CWD) | Always deploy from the project folder with .vercel/project.json | | Multiple deploys for separate edits | All edits → one deploy | | Didn't verify file actually changed before deploying | grep before deploying | | Didn't verify after deploy | curl on the live URL after every deploy | | Used --scope on a personal account | --scope is for team accounts only | | Used script -q /dev/null on Linux | Use plain vercel deploy --yes instead | | Stored token in ~/.zshrc | Keep token in env only, never write to files | | Started with partial understanding | Read source fully first, make a diff, then apply all edits |

Gotchas

--name is deprecated — don't use it
vercel project rm doesn't support --yes — interactive only
vercelAuthentication is NOT supported in API v9 — use ssoProtection: null
After vercel deploy --prod the default alias is assigned automatically, custom alias is not (always verify)
First deploy on a new project: no .vercel/project.json yet — just run vercel deploy --yes --prod, it creates the project automatically