Reference
Glossary
The course uses each of these words in one sense only. Definitions follow the Vercel and Next.js documentation; where the docs use two names for one thing, both are given.
Accounts and projects
- Hobby team
- Your personal space on the free plan. Vercel's docs call an individual account on Hobby a “Hobby team.” It has one owner and no other members. Accounts
- Project
- One app on Vercel, connected to one Git repository. It owns the app's deployments, domains, settings and environment variables. Projects
- Link
- The association between a folder on your machine and a project, made by
vercel link. Stored in a.verceldirectory holding the project and org IDs. Not committed to Git. - Commercial usage
- Any deployment “used for the purpose of financial gain of anyone involved in any part of the production of the project.” Not allowed on Hobby. Fair use guidelines
Deployments and environments
- Deployment
- One build of one commit, served at its own URL. A deployment keeps the environment variable values it was created with for as long as it exists.
- Environment
- Where a deployment runs and which set of variable values it gets. There are three: Production, Preview, and Development (the docs also say “Local Development”; it is your own machine). Environments
- Production branch
- The Git branch whose pushes create Production deployments. On a new project Vercel picks
main, thenmaster, then the repository's default branch. Git - Preview deployment
- A deployment made from any branch other than the production branch, from a pull request, or by running
vercelwithout--prod. - Generated URL
- The address Vercel creates automatically for a deployment. A preview gets two: one that follows the branch, and one fixed to the commit.
- Redeploy
- Build and deploy an existing deployment again, so that it picks up current environment variables and settings. Dashboard: Deployments → ⋯ → Redeploy. Managing deployments
- Deployment Protection
- Project setting that controls who can open deployment URLs. With Vercel Authentication under Standard Protection, everything except your production domains requires a Vercel login. Deployment Protection
Environment variables
- Environment variable
- A name and a value “configured outside your source code,” applied to one or more environments. Read in code as
process.env.NAME. Environment variables - Config
- A variable whose value stays readable after saving, by anyone with access to the project. The CLI flag is
--no-sensitive. Right for non-secret settings. - Secret (also: Sensitive)
- A variable whose value is “non-readable once created.” Deployments can use it; nobody can view it. Production and Preview only. The docs page says Sensitive; CLI 62 says Secret. Sensitive environment variables
NEXT_PUBLIC_- Next.js name prefix. A variable with it is inlined into the JavaScript bundle at build time and is visible to every visitor. A variable without it is available to server code only. Next.js
.env.local- The file Next.js reads for local values. Written by
vercel env pullfrom the Development environment. Ignored by Git. - System environment variable
- A variable Vercel sets for you, such as
VERCEL_ENV(production,previewordevelopment). System environment variables - Rotate
- Replace a credential with a new one. Safe order: create new, update Vercel, redeploy, verify, revoke old. Rotating environment variables
- Build time / runtime
- Build time is when Vercel compiles a deployment;
NEXT_PUBLIC_values are fixed then. Runtime is when a function handles a request; server-only variables are read then.
Code and configuration
- Route Handler
- A Next.js file named
route.tsunderapp/that answers HTTP requests with server code. On Vercel each one runs as a Vercel Function. - Vercel Function
- Server-side code Vercel runs on demand. On Hobby one invocation may run for at most 300 seconds. Duration limits
maxDuration- The longest one function invocation may run, in seconds. In the App Router, a named export in the route file.
vercel.json- A file in the repository root that overrides Vercel's defaults: redirects, headers, regions, cron jobs, build settings. One configuration file per project. vercel.json
- Marketplace integration
- A third-party service installed through Vercel, such as Neon Postgres. It provisions a resource (a database, say) and injects its credentials into your project as environment variables. Marketplace storage