Deploying with Vercel CLI for Custom Workflows

You can use the Vercel CLI to create custom deployment workflows, which is useful for on-premises or self-hosted scenarios where you need more control over your deployment process.

Setting Up Vercel CLI for Custom Deployments

The Vercel CLI allows you to deploy your projects directly from the command line 1. Here's how you can set up a custom workflow:

1. Install Vercel CLI:

   npm install --global vercel

2. Authenticate with Vercel:

   vercel login

3. Link your local project (for first-time deployments):

   vercel

   This creates a .vercel directory at the root of your project with organization and project IDs 1.

4. For subsequent deployments:

   • For preview deployments: vercel
   • For production deployments: vercel --prod 1

Creating Custom CI/CD Workflows

For on-premises or custom CI/CD pipelines, you can:

1. Retrieve your Vercel credentials:

   • Get your Vercel Access Token
   • Save the projectId and orgId from the .vercel/project.json file 2

2. Set up environment variables in your CI/CD system:

   • VERCEL_TOKEN
   • VERCEL_ORG_ID
   • VERCEL_PROJECT_ID 2

3. Build locally and deploy only the artifacts:

   vercel pull --yes --environment=preview --token=$VERCEL_TOKEN vercel build --token=$VERCEL_TOKEN vercel deploy --prebuilt --token=$VERCEL_TOKEN

This approach gives you full control over your deployment pipeline while still leveraging Vercel's infrastructure 2. The --prebuilt flag is particularly useful as it allows you to build your application locally or in your own CI environment and only upload the build artifacts to Vercel, without giving Vercel access to your source code.

Benefits for On-Premises Scenarios

This workflow is ideal for organizations that:

• Need to maintain code within their own infrastructure
• Have specific security requirements
• Want to integrate Vercel deployments into existing CI/CD pipelines
• Use trunk-based development workflows 2

Would you like more specific information about integrating Vercel CLI with a particular CI/CD system for your on-premises deployment?