vercel-cli

SKILL.md

Vercel CLI Skill

The Vercel CLI (vercel or vc) deploys, manages, and develops projects on the Vercel platform from the command line. Use vercel <command> --help for full flag details on any command.

The installed CLI help is the source of truth for obscure or newly added flags. If a command example here is not enough, check vercel <command> --help before acting instead of guessing.

Parse only stdout for URLs and JSON. Warnings, progress, and --help print to stderr; merge streams only when searching help text. Some help commands exit 2 after printing usage, so treat printed usage as a successful help read.

In agent/non-interactive mode, many commands report errors and required confirmations as a single JSON object on stdout with status, reason, hint, and next (runnable follow-up commands). Prefer a suggested next command over composing a retry only after confirming that it preserves the user's intended target and authorization; do not automatically run linking, authentication, or mutation follow-ups. Read commands such as list, logs, inspect, and api keep their normal output shape.

Critical: Project Linking

Project context depends on the command's working directory. Before a consequential read or mutation, run vercel project inspect --non-interactive from the intended directory and confirm the reported owner and project. This command resolves only existing context in non-interactive mode; stop on link_required or a target mismatch instead of linking automatically.

Many project-aware commands also accept --project <name-or-id> with --scope <team> for an explicit, one-command target. Confirm that target and scope preserve the user's intent before using them.

<cwd>/.vercel/project.json: Created by vercel link. This exact working-directory link wins over a repository link. The CLI does not generally inherit a root project.json when run from an arbitrary subdirectory.

<repo-root>/.vercel/repo.json: Created by vercel link --repo. The CLI selects the deepest project directory that contains the working directory.

Unmatched repository path: If no repo mapping contains the working directory, interactive repo resolution prompts among the configured projects. Non-interactive repo resolution currently selects the only configured project or remains unresolved when multiple choices exist. Commands that set up projects may then enter a linking flow, so non-interactive mode is not generally fail-closed.