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Web App

Vercel

Understand how managed Vercel projects are created during onboarding.

Vercel

Use Cofounder's Vercel workflow to preview and publish the marketing website and other supported business surfaces. Your core product hosting remains in the engineering stack you control.

Some existing workspaces also have a managed app project. That operational support does not change Cofounder's scope: it is not intended to build or rebuild the core product. See What Cofounder Does.

In workspaces that already use Cofounder's managed app stack, onboarding created two managed Vercel projects:

  • one for the app
  • one for marketing

Each project is linked to its corresponding managed GitHub repository.

Role

Vercel is where the app and marketing site get deployed.

  • the app project runs the product
  • the marketing project runs the site and launch surface
  • staging environments give the workspace a separate place to test changes

What Cofounder Sets Up

For each managed project, Cofounder:

  • links the GitHub repository
  • sets the production branch
  • creates a staging environment

What Else Gets Synced To Vercel

Managed Vercel projects are where Cofounder pushes:

  • Supabase environment variables for the app
  • staging and production environment variables needed by the managed app and marketing site

The onboarding flow also configures automation access on the managed Vercel projects so agent-driven deployment workflows can run.

Project Access And Invites

Cofounder will automatically invite you to the managed Vercel projects during onboarding. You will receive an email from Vercel.

You can also request an email invite from Settings > Advanced under Vercel Access. Enter your email address and choose Send invite. You should then receive an invite.

Bringing Your Own Repository

Managed repositories created by Cofounder are connected to their Vercel projects during provisioning. When you bring a repository, Cofounder first tries to connect it automatically. If Vercel requires the repository owner's authorization, Cofounder restores the previous connection and gives you the project's Git settings URL and connection instructions.

The project stays in Cofounder's Vercel team. You use your GitHub-connected Vercel account to authorize connecting your repository to that existing project. For a personal GitHub repository, the repository owner must make this connection. See GitHub connection permissions for organization-owned repositories.

The guided import in Settings > Advanced will:

  1. Send an invitation for access to the managed Vercel projects.
  2. Check that the invited email has administrator access to each managed project.
  3. Prepare the selected managed project, including its root directory, staging environment, and selected environment variables.
  4. Try to connect the selected repository automatically. If owner authorization is required, open the project's Git settings so you can connect it to that existing project, replacing the current repository if needed.
  5. Verify the live project connection before completing the import.

The Cofounder GitHub App and Vercel's GitHub integration have separate repository permissions. If the repository does not appear in Vercel, configure Vercel's GitHub integration to allow that repository, then return to the managed project's Git settings.

The import is complete when Cofounder verifies that the managed Vercel project is connected to the exact selected repository. It does not wait for a deployment to become ready, and it does not complete from a saved repository selection alone.

Closing the guide preserves your progress. Explicitly cancelling restores the previous managed configuration. If an imported repository later becomes disconnected or the Vercel project points somewhere else, Cofounder shows the repository as needing link review instead of claiming the setup is healthy.

Next Steps