Deploy a Next.js app from your AI agent, over MCP
Your AI agent wrote your Next.js app. Connected to while over MCP, it also deploys it, over HTTPS, and you choose who can open it: everyone, your customers or your colleagues.
By Aloïs Oddon, co-founder of Nextmap. Facts checked on November 2, 2026.
Prerequisites
- A Next.js app.
- An AI agent that works in a terminal: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or Gemini CLI.
Step 1: Give your agent these instructions
Open your agent in your app’s folder, and paste these instructions into it:
Connect to while with my account (while.sh/agents), then deploy my app.Without an account, your agent deploys your app as a trial, in one request. To keep it, open the link it gives you and create your account.
With your account, your agent adds while’s MCP server itself. If it asks you to, restart it. On the first call to while, a page opens in your browser. In Claude Code, if it doesn’t open, type /mcp, choose while, then Authenticate. On that page, choose your app, or “A new app”, then click Authorize.
Step 2: Open your app
Your agent gives you your app’s address, for example https://mon-appli.while.cloud, over HTTPS.
What your agent does
It writes while.yaml at the root of your app:
apiVersion: while/v1
project: mon-appli
services:
- name: web
port: 3000
health:
path: /Port 3000 is the port of next start, which reads the PORT variable1. Your app is built, its tests run, and then it starts. It only receives visitors once its home page is ready.
Restrict the app to your colleagues
You, to your agent: Restrict the app to people in the company.
Your agent adds two lines to the service:
access: internal
email_domains: [acme.com]Once your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is linked to while, on the Pro plan, your colleagues open it with their usual account, and your app receives their name and email address, with no sign-in page to write.
Share with a customer, protected by a password
You, to your agent: Open the app to our customer, with a password.
Your agent makes the app private. Then, on the app’s page in while, you create a link that lasts 1, 7 or 30 days, with a password your agent will never see.
Add a database
You, to your agent: Add a PostgreSQL database for bookings.
Your agent declares the database in while.yaml, and its address reaches your app in DATABASE_URL. It is backed up every day. The details are in the guide to the Node.js API and its PostgreSQL database.
Put the app on your domain
You, to your agent: Put the app on planning.acme.com.
Your agent declares the domain, you add the DNS records it gives you, and the HTTPS certificate follows.
See a new version before you deploy it
You, to your agent: Show me the new page before you deploy it.
Your agent opens a preview, at its own address, with its own data. You look at it, and then your agent puts it into production.
Go back to the previous version
You, to your agent: Go back to the previous version.
In the 30 minutes after a deployment, the previous version comes back in a second. After that, it takes a few seconds. Once the previous version is back, your agent reads what broke in while’s logs, fixes it and deploys again.
In the docs: Web service, PostgreSQL databases, Internal access, Custom domain, Previews and Versions and rollback.
Next steps
Sources
- Next.js, the next command and its options (next start, PORT), accessed November 1, 2026