Vercel CI Enters Beta and Runs Only the Tasks a Push Affects

Vercel put its own CI service into beta Oct. 28 on all plans. It runs only the tasks a code change affects. Vercel said time from git push to “CI passed” in its internal repositories is 2-6x shorter than before (Vercel changelog, Oct. 28, 2026).

What Shipped

Vercel CI reads a repository’s turbo.json to learn which tasks exist and which depend on each other. Setup is adding "tags": ["ci"] to a task. Vercel said there is no workflow YAML to maintain. Repositories not yet on Turborepo need a turbo.json and the turbo package. Single-package repos work too.

On each push, Vercel decides which tagged tasks the change touches. Tasks whose inputs did not change come from Remote Cache. It is on by default. Each remaining task runs on its own machine on Hive, Vercel’s compute layer. It starts as soon as its dependencies finish. Dependencies install once per run and cache across updates, Vercel said.

Results show up in the Vercel dashboard, the CLI and Vercel MCP. The vc ci command lists runs, inspects tasks, pulls logs for a single task and greps across recent runs. Vercel pitched that last one for spotting a test that has been flaky all week. Vercel CI posts a check to the GitHub pull request. Existing branch protection rules can block merges on failure.

Vercel said its internal repositories and the private beta have completed nearly 8 million tasks. Vercel’s stated reason is coding agents. They open more pull requests, and each waits on CI. For GA, Vercel listed advanced observability, a vc ci command for distributed execution before pushing, and more granular test selection.

The Take

Vercel’s pitch: CI is the bottleneck for agent-written code, and a build graph beats a workflow file at deciding what to run. That is plausible for monorepos already on Turborepo. The 2-6x figure is Vercel’s own measurement on its own repositories. A team’s result depends on how well it declares tasks and inputs.

The tradeoff is dependence on two Vercel pieces at once. CI config lives in turbo.json. The runner lives on Vercel. Teams with GitHub Actions workflows that do more than run Turborepo tasks should try it on the slowest jobs first, not as a full replacement.

Key Takeaways

• Vercel CI entered beta Oct. 28, 2026, on all plans.
• It runs only the ci-tagged Turborepo tasks a change affects, with Remote Cache on by default.
• Vercel reports push-to-pass time 2-6x shorter on its own repositories.
• Results post as a GitHub pull request check. Branch protection still applies.