Vercel CI no longer needs a linked Vercel project
You can now attach Vercel CI straight to a GitHub repository with nothing deployed on Vercel at all, dropping the placeholder project teams used to need just to get CI checks running.
Vercel CI can now run on a GitHub repository with no Vercel project behind it, Vercel said on 3 November. Until now, teams who only wanted CI checks, not an actual deployment, had to create an empty project purely to link the repository.
Enabling it needs the Vercel GitHub App installed with access to the repo, a GitHub account connected to your Vercel account, and write or admin permission on the repo. From a clone of the repository:
vercel ci enableThat turns CI on for whichever team the CLI is scoped to (pass --scope <team> for a different one), and tasks defined in the repo start running from the next push. The feature is private-GitHub-repos only for now; public repositories and other git providers aren’t supported yet.
Why it matters: if you have ever spun up a throwaway Vercel project solely so a repo could get CI checks, that workaround is gone. Vercel CI becomes usable on any private GitHub repo on its own terms, without a deployment target attached to it.