Deploy a v0 app outside Vercel, from your AI agent, over MCP

Prerequisites

• A v0 app, synced with GitHub¹. Your agent clones the repository to your computer.
• 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: /
    build:
      args:
        NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL: https://abcdefgh.supabase.co
        NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY: eyJhbGciOi…

Your Next.js app is built at every deployment, then started with next start. The public values, the ones that start with NEXT_PUBLIC_, are passed at build time, when Next.js writes them into your pages³. Your server’s secret keys are entered in while: your app receives them, and your agent never sees them.

Share with a customer, protected by a password

Your agent makes the app private, then, on the app’s page in while, you create a link valid for 1, 7 or 30 days, with a password your agent will never see.

Restrict your app to your colleagues

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, with no sign-in page to write.

Move to your own domain

Your agent declares the domain, you add the DNS records it gives you, and the HTTPS certificate follows.

Bring your data back to France

Your agent declares a PostgreSQL database, backed up every day, copies your tables into it, and writes the small API that serves them to your app.

See a new version before you deploy it

Your agent opens a preview, at its own address. If your database is in while, the preview also has its own data. You look at it, then your agent puts it into production.

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: Internal access, Custom domain, Previews, Versions and rollback and Variables and secrets.

Next steps

• Deploy a Next.js app
• Compare the Vercel alternatives
• Where to deploy an app built with Lovable, Bolt or v0