Vercel advanced troubleshooting

Vercel Advanced Troubleshooting

Overview

Diagnose hard-to-find Vercel issues: intermittent cold start failures, edge function crashes, region-specific behavior, function bundling problems, and serverless concurrency issues. Uses systematic isolation, request tracing, and Vercel-specific debugging techniques.

Prerequisites

• Vercel CLI with access to production logs
• Familiarity with vercel-common-errors (standard debugging)
• curl and jq for API inspection
• Access to deployment inspection tools

Instructions

Step 1: Request-Level Tracing

# Trace a single request through Vercel's edge network
curl -v https://yourdomain.com/api/endpoint 2>&1 | grep -E "x-vercel|cf-ray|age|cache"

# Key headers to check:
# x-vercel-id: <region>::<function-id> — which region served the request
# x-vercel-cache: HIT/MISS/STALE — edge cache status
# x-vercel-execution-region: iad1 — function execution region
# age: 45 — seconds since edge cached the response
# x-matched-path: /api/endpoint — routing match result

Step 2: Cold Start Investigation

// Instrument cold start timing in your function
let coldStart = true;
const initTime = Date.now();

export default function handler(req, res) {
  const isCold = coldStart;
  coldStart = false;

  const handlerStart = Date.now();
  // ... your logic ...

  res.setHeader('x-cold-start', String(isCold));
  res.setHeader('x-init-duration', String(handlerStart - initTime));
  res.json({
    coldStart: isCold,
    initDuration: isCold ? handlerStart - initTime : 0,
    handlerDuration: Date.now() - handlerStart,
    region: process.env.VERCEL_REGION,
  });
}

# Measure cold start frequency over N requests
for i in $(seq 1 20); do
  curl -s https://yourdomain.com/api/endpoint \
    | jq '{coldStart, initDuration, region}'
  sleep 2  # Wait between requests to allow isolate recycling
done

Step 3: Function Bundle Analysis

# Check what's being bundled into your function
vercel inspect https://my-app-xxx.vercel.app

# Check function sizes in the deployment
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $VERCEL_TOKEN" \
  "https://api.vercel.com/v13/deployments/dpl_xxx" \
  | jq '.functions | to_entries[] | {path: .key, size: .value.size, regions: .value.regions}'

# Locally — check what @vercel/nft traces for a function
npx @vercel/nft print api/heavy-endpoint.ts 2>/dev/null | head -50
# Shows all files that will be bundled

# Find unexpectedly large dependencies
npx @vercel/nft print api/heavy-endpoint.ts 2>/dev/null \
  | xargs -I {} du -sh {} 2>/dev/null | sort -rh | head -20

Step 4: Region-Specific Debugging

# Test from different regions to isolate geographic issues
# Use Vercel's deployment URL with region hints
for region in iad1 sfo1 cdg1 hnd1; do
  echo "=== Region: $region ==="
  curl -s -w "HTTP %{http_code} | Time: %{time_total}s\n" \
    -H "x-vercel-ip-country: US" \
    https://yourdomain.com/api/endpoint
done

# Check if the issue is region-dependent
# If latency varies wildly, check:
# 1. Function region vs database region (cross-region latency)
# 2. Edge middleware adding delay
# 3. External API calls from wrong region

Step 5: Edge Function Crash Debugging

// Edge functions crash silently on Node.js API usage
// Common crashes and their symptoms:

// Symptom: EDGE_FUNCTION_INVOCATION_FAILED with no error details
// Cause: Using Node.js Buffer, fs, crypto.createHash in edge runtime

// Diagnostic: check if imports are edge-compatible
export const config = { runtime: 'edge' };

export default function handler(request: Request) {
  // This will crash silently:
  // const hash = require('crypto').createHash('sha256');

  // Use Web Crypto instead:
  const encoder = new TextEncoder();
  const data = encoder.encode('test');
  const hashBuffer = await crypto.subtle.digest('SHA-256', data);

  return Response.json({ ok: true });
}

# Check if a module is edge-compatible
npx edge-runtime --eval "import('your-module')" 2>&1
# Errors here mean the module won't work in edge functions

Step 6: Concurrency and Throttling Debug

# Check current function concurrency limits
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $VERCEL_TOKEN" \
  "https://api.vercel.com/v9/projects/my-app" \
  | jq '{plan: .plan, concurrency: .concurrencyBucketName}'

# Hobby: 10 concurrent, Pro: 1000, Enterprise: 100000

# Load test to find throttling threshold
npx autocannon -c 50 -d 10 https://yourdomain.com/api/endpoint
# Watch for 429 responses indicating FUNCTION_THROTTLED

Step 7: Systematic Isolation

Issue persists? Isolate systematically:

1. Does it happen on preview deployments?
   └── No → Production-only env var or domain issue

2. Does it happen with a minimal function?
   └── No → Issue is in your code, not Vercel platform

3. Does it happen in all regions?
   └── No → Region-specific infrastructure issue

4. Does it happen with edge runtime?
   └── No → Node.js-specific issue (cold starts, module compat)

5. Does it happen without middleware?
   └── No → Middleware is interfering — check matcher scope

6. Create minimal reproduction:
   └── api/test.ts with only the failing behavior
   └── Deploy standalone and test

Step 8: Vercel Support Escalation

# Collect comprehensive evidence
mkdir vercel-debug && cd vercel-debug

# Deployment details
vercel inspect https://yourdomain.com > inspect.txt
vercel logs https://yourdomain.com --limit=200 > logs.txt

# Request trace
curl -v https://yourdomain.com/api/failing-endpoint 2>&1 > curl-trace.txt

# Function analysis
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $VERCEL_TOKEN" \
  "https://api.vercel.com/v13/deployments/dpl_xxx" > deployment.json

# Platform status at time of issue
curl -s "https://www.vercel-status.com/api/v2/summary.json" > status.json

tar czf vercel-debug-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz .

Output

• Request traced through Vercel's edge network with region and cache data
• Cold start frequency and duration quantified
• Function bundle analyzed for size issues
• Issue isolated to specific layer (edge, runtime, region, middleware)
• Evidence bundle ready for support escalation

Error Handling

Symptom	Likely Cause	Debug Approach
Intermittent 500 errors	Cold start + unhandled async	Add global error handler, check init code
Latency spikes every ~15 min	Function isolate recycling (cold start)	Measure with x-cold-start header
Works in preview, fails in prod	Env var scope mismatch	Compare env vars across environments
EDGE_FUNCTION_INVOCATION_FAILED	Node.js API in edge runtime	Check imports for Node.js-only modules
Function works locally, fails deployed	Missing dependency or env var	Run vercel build locally, check output

Resources

• Vercel Error Codes
• Function Limitations
• Edge Runtime API
• Vercel Support
• @vercel/nft

Next Steps

For load testing and scaling, see vercel-load-scale.