Cofounder Docs
Cofounder Docs

Cofounder Docs

Vercel

Understand how managed Vercel projects are created during onboarding.

Vercel

During onboarding, Cofounder creates 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.

Bringing Your Own Repository

Managed repositories created by Cofounder are connected to their Vercel projects during provisioning. Private repositories that you bring to Cofounder use a manual connection step.

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. Open the project's Git settings so you can connect the selected GitHub repository.
  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