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This guide deploys Reactive Resume to a Vercel project with the Deploy with Vercel wizard. The wizard provisions a database, file storage, and Redis for you. You supply two secrets. Vercel serves the static web assets from its CDN and runs the shared Hono server in one Node.js 24 Function. Docker is also supported and uses the same API, authentication, templates, and data format. See Self-hosting with Docker for that option.

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Before you start

You need:
  • A Vercel account and a GitHub account.
  • Two independent random secrets, AUTH_SECRET and ENCRYPTION_SECRET. Generate each one separately:
    Save both values in a password manager. You must keep the same values for the life of the installation. Losing ENCRYPTION_SECRET makes saved AI-provider API keys unreadable.
The wizard connects three services through Vercel Marketplace: Quotas and permitted use depend on your Vercel, Neon, and Upstash plans. Review Vercel limits, Neon, and Upstash before you choose a plan. Turn off automatic paid upgrades if you want to stay inside a free allowance.
Each AI agent run stops active work after four minutes. This keeps the run, plus saving and cleanup, inside Vercel Hobby’s five-minute Function limit. The limit applies to each question, not to the whole conversation. Docker uses the same limit.

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Deploy

1

Start the wizard

Click the button:Deploy with Vercel
2

Choose the Git scope

On Hobby, select your personal GitHub account. Private repositories owned by a GitHub organization require Vercel Pro.
3

Connect the services

Approve Neon, Upstash, and Blob. Set Blob access to private. Pick nearby regions for all three, ideally close to the Function region (iad1 by default).
4

Enter the secrets

Paste AUTH_SECRET and ENCRYPTION_SECRET.
5

Deploy

Keep the project root at the repository root and keep the committed vercel.json. Do not select the apps/web subdirectory and do not add an SPA fallback rewrite.The build compiles both apps and applies database migrations before the deployment goes live. You do not run migrations yourself.
Do not paste Docker’s .env.example into Vercel. Its local URLs and S3 settings select the wrong services.

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Check the deployment

  1. Open https://<your-project>.vercel.app/api/health. database, storage, and redis should all report healthy. A sleeping Neon database can fail the first check; retry once.
  2. Open the production domain and create an account.
  3. Optional: add an AI provider under Settings to enable AI features.
  4. Optional: configure SMTP for verification and password-reset emails. Without SMTP, emails are written to the Function logs.
  5. Optional: add social or custom OAuth sign-in with the callback URLs in the SSO guide.

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Use a custom domain

  1. Add the domain to the Vercel project.
  2. Set APP_URL to the full origin, for example https://resume.example.com.
  3. Update the callback URLs of every OAuth provider you configured.
  4. Redeploy.
Changing the domain does not move stored files. Files stay under the same DEPLOYMENT_NAMESPACE.

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Update the deployment

Redeploy the same project. Keep its connected services and secrets unchanged.
  • Migrations run in the build step, never in runtime Functions. A database advisory lock serializes concurrent deployments.
  • Rolling back to an older deployment does not roll back the database schema. Keep migrations backward-compatible, or restore a database backup.

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Preview deployments

Preview builds refuse to run migrations by default, so untrusted preview code cannot change your production database. To enable previews:
  1. Connect separate Neon, Upstash, and Blob resources to the Preview environment.
  2. Set ALLOW_PREVIEW_MIGRATIONS=true for Preview only.
A storage namespace does not isolate SQL rows. Never connect the production database to the Preview environment.

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Back up your data

Back up the Neon database and the Blob store. Store AUTH_SECRET and ENCRYPTION_SECRET separately from those backups. Moving between Docker and Vercel does not copy the database or files. Migrate them yourself.

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Build locally

A local Vercel build applies migrations, so run it only against an isolated database.
Replace sensitive pulled values with local-only ones first. The CLI has no deployment hostname before publishing, so APP_URL is required here. Cloud builds set it automatically.

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Environment variables

Explicit variables take precedence over the Marketplace aliases listed here. For SMTP, OAuth providers, and feature flags, use the same variables as Docker. See Self-hosting with Docker.

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Upload limits

Vercel limits Function request bodies to 4.5 MB. The web app sends larger requests through private Blob staging, so these application limits still apply:
  • General uploads: 10 MB per file.
  • Agent attachments: 25 MiB per file and 100 MiB per thread.
Blob objects are never public. The application serves public pictures and authorizes private files itself. API clients that send large RPC requests must follow the large RPC requests protocol. REST (/api/openapi) and MCP request bodies stay subject to the 4.5 MB limit.

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Troubleshooting