Why aren't commits triggering deployments on Vercel?

You have been working on a feature and have committed some code ready to be pushed up. You are looking forward to a live URL that demonstrates your changes. You see that the commit has been pushed up, but there isn't an accompanying Vercel Deployment or you see the Git author must have access to project error in your repository or Vercel Team Activity. Read on to learn about why this might happen and what you can do to fix it.

Double check Git Integration Installation

When you installed the Vercel for Git integration, if you only granted permission for a limited set of repositories, there is a chance that the repository you are trying to push to doesn't have the necessary permissions. You can resolve this from the Git provider side by either granting permissions for all of your repositories, or you can make sure the repository in question is added to the list.

You also need to make sure that you have correctly set up the git login connection and that your git user has the required permissions to set the connection up on the repository as well. For GitHub, collaborator access is required, on GitLab you must be a Maintainer and for BitBucket this requires an Admin.

Private Repositories

If you are pushing commits to a private repository connected to a Vercel project that belongs to a Team, you must be a member of that team on Vercel in order for the deployment to trigger successfully. You can read more about this in our documentation.

If you have pushed a commit to your Git repository and don't see a deployment being created in Vercel, check for any commit comments, as this will provide further information and explain if the issue is related to the commit author not being a member of the team. There will be a link to request access here, once you have been added to the Team, your commits will deploy as expected. You will also be able to see these commits in your Activity log with the failure reason shown here too.

Learn how to invite others into your team.

If you are already a member of the team, check the commit author details and make sure this is the same Git user that is linked to your Vercel account. You may need to edit your local Git config to make sure commits are always linked to the correct username and email address of the Git account that you use with Vercel, especially if you have a second Git account that might be used locally instead.

If the commit author looks correct, you may have multiple accounts on Vercel that are connected to the same Git account. Currently it is not possible to have more than one Vercel account linked to the same Git account so when you set up the link on a second account it will remove the link with your other one. This can lead to the Git connection swapping between both Vercel accounts, showing these errors unexpectedly when it was working previously.

Hobby to Pro Upgrade

If you have recently upgraded your account from Hobby to Pro, you may start seeing the above mentioned errors related to permissions. This is because the behaviour is different on Hobby teams and the team member restrictions only apply to Pro accounts.

Public Repositories

Pushed commits will deploy automatically for public repositories. However, if the vercel.json file changed or the project has Environment Variables, a Team Member on Vercel will have to authorize the Deployment. This is a security measure that ensures changes to Environment Variables and other configuration properties are reviewed before a Deployment is created (it can be disabled if you prefer). A link to authorize the Deployment will be posted as a comment on the Pull Request.

Correctly Configured Metadata

In order for your commits to get registered properly with your Git account, you need to make sure your commit author information is appropriately configured locally. If your email does not match up with your GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket account, there is no way to verify that your commits are authorized for deployment.

The commands for configuring your name and email are shown below:

git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com
Shell commands for configuring your Git commit author metadata.

Look For Commit Comments

If the Vercel for Git integration is installed properly, the Vercel Bot will leave comments on your commits that indicate success or failure. These comments may not always be present on the pull request if no Deployment could be created, this occurs when pre-deployment validation fails, for example, an incorrectly formatted vercel.json file.

Vercel Support

If you are still having issues after considering all of the above, please visit http://vercel.com/help and share the most recent git SHA (full-length) in question.

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