Deployment bypass

Vercel Deployment Protection requires a Vercel login to open a preview. Reviewers usually don’t have Vercel accounts, so a thread link to a protected preview stops at Vercel’s sign-in page. When you add your Vercel bypass secret to a project, links from Skyelight open the preview directly.

Set it up

1. 1

   Copy the secret from Vercel

   Copy the Protection Bypass for Automation secret from your Vercel project’s Deployment Protection settings.

2. 2

   Add it in Review Access

   Under Project settings Review Access, click Add, choose Vercel and paste the secret. Owners and admins can do this. The card then shows “Protection bypass is on” and the last few characters of the key.

The secret applies to the whole project, not to one preview address, so it has its own card below Review Links.

Shareable Links are not accepted

Skyelight refuses Vercel Shareable Links, because they expire after a week. A reviewer who opens an expired link sees an error and may assume the preview is broken. The bypass secret keeps working until you rotate it in Vercel.

What changes for reviewers

Without the secret, a reviewer who opens a thread from an email or the web app sees Vercel’s login and can’t continue.

With the secret, links that Skyelight builds to your protected preview include an x-vercel-protection-bypass value, and Vercel lets them through. Reviewers still sign in to Skyelight to leave feedback. The bypass only gets them past Vercel’s login.

Who can see the secret

To turn the bypass off, choose Revoke from the key’s menu in Review Access. Links then stop at Vercel’s login again.