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The primary production deployment of the Node.js website is hosted on Vercel. Deployment is sponsored by the OpenJS Foundation.

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How Deployments Work

1

Push to main

Every push to the main branch triggers an automatic Vercel deployment. The site is built using pnpm build (which runs next build) and deployed globally.
2

Branch previews

Pull requests automatically receive a preview deployment URL. This allows reviewers to see the live changes without merging.
3

Excluded branches

Branches matching dependabot/* and gh/* are excluded from automatic preview deployments to avoid unnecessary build consumption.

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Custom Install Script

Vercel uses a custom install command rather than the default npm install: 
pnpm install --prod --frozen-lockfile
The --prod flag means only dependencies are installed — devDependencies are skipped entirely during the Vercel build.
This is a critical rule: any package that is needed at build time must be listed under dependencies in apps/site/package.json, not devDependencies.If a build-time package is placed in devDependencies, the Vercel build will fail because the package won’t be installed.

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Why This Matters

In standard Node.js projects, devDependencies are packages only needed for development (testing, linting, type checking). In this project, because Vercel skips devDependencies, anything used during next build — including MDX plugins, data processing tools, and content utilities — must be in dependencies. Notable packages in dependencies for this reason:
  • @mdx-js/mdx — MDX compilation at build time
  • @node-core/rehype-shiki — Syntax highlighting at build time
  • gray-matter — Frontmatter parsing at build time
  • remark-gfm, rehype-slug, rehype-autolink-headings — Content processing at build time
  • next-intl — i18n at build time

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Environment Variables

Vercel provides several system environment variables consumed by the site:
VariableSourcePurpose
VERCEL_ENVVercel systemIdentifies Vercel environment (production, preview, development)
VERCEL_URLVercel systemFull deployment URL (used to construct BASE_URL)
NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URLManual overrideOverride the canonical base URL
NEXT_GITHUB_API_KEYManual secretGitHub API token to avoid rate limiting
// next.constants.mjs
export const VERCEL_ENV = process.env.VERCEL_ENV || undefined;

export const BASE_URL = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL
  ? process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL
  : process.env.VERCEL_URL
    ? `https://${process.env.VERCEL_URL}`
    : 'https://nodejs.org';

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Build Configuration

The Vercel project is configured to:
  • Use pnpm as the package manager
  • Run pnpm build as the build command (executes from apps/site/)
  • Serve from the apps/site/.next/ directory
  • Enable the React Compiler (reactCompiler: true in next.config.mjs)

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Performance Features

The Next.js configuration enables several performance-oriented experimental features that benefit the Vercel build: 
// next.config.mjs
experimental: {
  serverMinification: true,          // Minify server-side code
  webpackBuildWorker: true,          // Parallel webpack compilation
  parallelServerBuildTraces: true,   // Parallel server build traces
  parallelServerCompiles: true,      // Parallel server compilation
  turbopackFileSystemCacheForDev: true, // Dev-only: faster Turbopack
  optimizePackageImports: [          // Tree-shake these packages
    '@radix-ui/react-accessible-icon',
    '@radix-ui/react-dropdown-menu',
    '@radix-ui/react-label',
    '@radix-ui/react-select',
    '@radix-ui/react-tabs',
    '@radix-ui/react-tooltip',
    '@radix-ui/react-avatar',
    'tailwindcss',
    'shiki',
  ],
}

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Skew Protection

Vercel provides version skew protection out of the box. This ensures that users who loaded an older version of the site’s JavaScript still receive correct API responses even after a new deployment — preventing errors caused by mismatched client/server versions. For the Cloudflare deployment, skew protection requires additional manual configuration. See Cloudflare Deployment.

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Ownership

The Vercel project is owned and maintained by the OpenJS Foundation under the nodejs-vercel GitHub account. Sponsorship of the hosting is managed by the OpenJS Foundation.

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