A session chronicle of Vercel Wrangling & the README Forge.
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Act I · Backlog
Add a backlog item to integrate https://docs.sentry.io/
A single line was added to the ## Future section of product-brief.md — Sentry for error monitoring and performance tracing, with the docs URL preserved for the engineer who picks it up.
No sprint assignment, no urgency. Just the wolf marking the trail.
Act II · Debug
There's a 404 error locally
fetch("http://192.168.1.179:9653/", { "method": "GET" });
Playwright navigated to the local dev server. The root / returned a 404 — but oddly, the AppShell was still rendering around it. A prior session had added basePath: '/app' to next.config.ts, and a public/index.html placeholder was supposed to redirect to /app.
The bug: with basePath set, Next.js serves public/ files under the basePath prefix in dev mode. So public/index.html was landing at /app/index.html — not at /. The placeholder was silently useless.
The fix: Next.js middleware runs entirely outside the basePath context. A middleware redirecting / → /app when NODE_ENV !== 'production' solves it cleanly. In production, the middleware is a no-op — Vercel's CDN serves the marketing site at / directly.
🐺 Root Cause Found
Next.js basePath prefix applies to public/ files in dev mode. public/index.html was served at /app/index.html, not /. Middleware is the correct intercept point — it runs before basePath routing.
// development/frontend/src/middleware.ts export function middleware(request: NextRequest) { if ( process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production" && request.nextUrl.pathname === "/" ) { return NextResponse.redirect(new URL("/app", request.url)); } } export const config = { matcher: ["/"] };
Act III · Revert
Revert back to this commit: 8f4b5db698fcb31ba927364b293800446257a4eb
Three commits were cut from the chain: the middleware fix, the placeholder, and the original basePath: '/app' deployment approach. The forge showed all three commits already on origin/main — so the revert required a force push.
The wolf confirmed before striking. The user said: yes go ahead. The commits were undone.
git reset --hard 8f4b5db698fcb31ba927364b293800446257a4eb
git push --force origin main
# + 56cdc65...8f4b5db main -> main (forced update)Act IV · Deployment
Update the vercel deployment so that the static site is served from /static
With the revert complete, next.config.ts had no basePath — the Next.js app owned /. The new plan: copy static/ into development/frontend/public/static/ before build so Next.js serves it verbatim at /static/*. Clean, no restructuring needed.
The CI step was added to vercel.yml. The APP_URL in the marketing site already pointed to the full Vercel URL — no change needed there.
- name: Copy static site into Next.js public/static/
run: |
mkdir -p development/frontend/public/static
cp -r static/. development/frontend/public/static/Act V · Bug Fix
Inspect https://fenrir-ledger.vercel.app/static — none of the images are working
Playwright navigated to the production URL. The network log showed /icon.png and /favicon.ico both returning 404. The HTML used relative paths — src="icon.png" — which browsers resolve relative to the document's base URL.
The culprit: the page was served at /static without a trailing slash. Without the slash, browsers treat /static as a file, not a directory, and resolve relative paths from / — so icon.png became /icon.png rather than /static/icon.png.
Fix: three asset references updated to explicit root-relative paths with the /static/ prefix.
🐺 Bug Fixed
Relative paths (icon.png, favicon.ico) resolve from / when page is served without trailing slash. Fixed: src="icon.png" → src="/static/icon.png" (×2) and href="favicon.ico" → href="/static/favicon.ico"
Act VI · New Feature
Add a link to the session logs in the footer. Ensure the session logs are deployed to vercel too at /sessions
Two changes in one strike. The footer of static/index.html already had the .step-log-link CSS class defined — used it to slot in ᛏ Session Chronicles → between the rule and the copyright line.
The Vercel workflow was extended with a second cp — mirroring sessions/ into public/sessions/ before build, so the archive lands at /sessions/* on the same deployment.
mkdir -p development/frontend/public/sessions cp -r sessions/. development/frontend/public/sessions/
Act VII · Identity
Add this status badge to the README
The Vercel deployment badge was placed at the top of README.md, directly below the title — a live signal visible to all who enter the repository. Green when the wolf holds the line. Red when the forge has cooled.
Act VIII · Design
Update the README.md links to the vercel deployment ᛟ Enter the Ledger → | ᚱ Visit the Marketing Site →
Each link on one line. Add a link to the session log with it's rune
The old single-line pipe-separated link was replaced with three distinct heading links — one per line. The marketing site URL was updated from the old GitHub Pages address to /static on Vercel. A third link was added for ᛏ Session Chronicles pointing to /sessions.
Act IX · Voice
Add some prose around the links in the voice of the wolf
Three lines of wolf-voice prose were woven between the links — unhurried, knowing, each one naming the purpose of the path it guards.
// Before the Ledger link: *The wolf does not wait. Step into the forge and name your chains before they name you.*// Before the Marketing Site link: Read the runes. Know what was built, why it was built, and what hunts next.
// Before the Session Chronicles link: Every session forged in fire, recorded in runes. The wolf remembers what the gods tried to bury.
Act X · Layout
Make those links in a single row of 3 cards in the markdown. Three boxes on one row with links and prose and runes
Standard Markdown has no multi-column layout. The solution: an HTML <table> with three <td> cells, each centred and set to width="33%". GitHub's Markdown renderer honours HTML tables in full.
Each card holds the rune large at the top as a heading, a bold link, and the italic wolf prose beneath. The three gates now stand side by side in the README.
Act XI · Quick Fix
Make those links open in a new tab
Standard Markdown link syntax — [text](url) — has no mechanism for target="_blank". Since the links were already inside an HTML table, converting them to raw <a> tags with target="_blank" rel="noopener" was the natural move. The gates now open onto new ground without pulling the wolf away from the scroll.
<a href="https://fenrir-ledger.vercel.app" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Enter the Ledger → </a>